100 Thalers / Birr

The Bank of Abyssinia was not an Ethiopian institution in any meaningful sense — it was a concession granted to the National Bank of Egypt in 1905, itself controlled by British interests, which is precisely why the notes ended up printed in London by Bradbury Wilkinson. Emperor Menelik II accepted the arrangement partly to access modern banking infrastructure, partly because he had little leverage to demand otherwise. The dual denomination — Thalers and Birr — reflects the period's monetary ambiguity, with the Maria Theresa Thaler still functioning as the dominant trade currency across the Horn of Africa long after European mints had stopped treating it as anything but a commodity.

The Bank of Abyssinia's concession was eventually terminated in 1931 when Haile Selassie established the Bank of Ethiopia, replacing it entirely. Notes of this series in high grades are genuinely scarce; the Abyssinian climate and low banking penetration meant most paper currency either deteriorated rapidly or was never widely handled to begin with.