1000 Piastres

The 1000 Piastres is among the highest-denomination notes ever issued for Indochina and appeared just as French authority in the region was collapsing under the weight of the First Indochina War. Banque de France handled the printing in Paris, which by 1951 was standard for high-value Indochina issues — the colonial infrastructure could not support security printing at that scale locally.

Paul Jouve was a genuine specialist in Asian and big-cat imagery, and his involvement here was not incidental. Jules Piel and Jacques Beltrand — the latter from the Beltrand engraving dynasty — translated Jouve's designs into intaglio with the kind of precision that made these notes technically sophisticated even as the currency itself was losing credibility on the ground in Hanoi and Saigon.

The piastre was formally replaced in 1952–1954 across the three successor states, making this note's working life extremely brief.