1000 Lei

Romania's shift to polymer banknotes was well underway by the late 1990s, making this 1998 cotton paper 1000 Lei something of a transitional footnote — the country had already begun experimenting with polymer issues and would complete its move to that substrate in the early 2000s before the sweeping redenomination of 2005 wiped out four zeros and rendered the entire old Lei series obsolete overnight.

Thomas De La Rue's engraver James Moore is credited on the plate. De La Rue had printed Romanian notes across several political regimes; the relationship predates the communist period entirely.