150 Lire Banca del Salento

Banca del Salento issued this 150 Lire note in 1977 as a fiduciary mini-assegno — a small-denomination paper instrument that proliferated across Italy during the acute coin shortage of the 1970s. The chronic scarcity of spiccioli forced banks, retailers, and local consortia to issue their own substitute change, and the Consorzio fra gli Artigiani della Provincia di Lecce backed this particular series to facilitate small transactions among artisan traders in the Lecce area.

The Banca del Salento series is among the more regionally specific of these emissions — tied to a province rather than a single retailer — which gives it slightly more documentary interest than the commercial miniassegni that flooded the same period.