100 Rupees

Ceylon's first post-independence central bank — established in 1950 — wasted little time asserting itself on the currency. Bradbury Wilkinson had printed colonial-era Ceylon notes before, so the continuity of the printing relationship masked what was actually a significant institutional rupture: notes now issued under a Ceylonese authority rather than a currency board operating at imperial remove.

Pick 53 is the higher-denomination workhorse of that transitional series, and the watermark — Bradbury Wilkinson's standard security provision of the period — remains the note's primary authentication feature. Paper quality on this series can suffer from tropical humidity damage, a known condition issue across surviving specimens from this region and era.