1000 Francs 5th series

The fifth series was commissioned in the late 1940s when the SNB concluded its wartime fourth series had aged poorly in both design and security. Pierre Gauchat, a Basel-trained graphic artist with strong ties to Swiss poster art, led the design work — an unusual choice given that most central banks of the period defaulted to established banknote specialists. Thomas De La Rue handled production throughout the entire print run, which stretched across two decades and generated an exceptional number of signature combinations: thirty-seven in total for this denomination alone, reflecting the SNB's practice of issuing notes dated to specific board decisions rather than print batches.

Demonetization came in 1978. Notes held past that deadline were redeemable at the SNB until 2000 under Swiss law, a policy that substantially reduced the number that entered collector hands as genuinely unspent examples.