150 Lire Cassa di Risparmio di Biella

Biella's savings bank issued this 150 lire note in 1976 as an emergency fractional substitute — a fiduciario, or trust note — during the chronic small-change shortage that plagued Italy through much of the 1970s. The Banca d'Italia had effectively authorized local savings institutions to plug the gap with their own printed scrip, a stopgap that resulted in dozens of distinct regional issues circulating simultaneously across the country.

The Officina Carte Valori Istituti Lombardi in Milan handled production for several of these institutional issues, bringing a degree of anti-counterfeiting sophistication to what were essentially local convenience tokens. The 150 lire denomination itself is a creature of inflation — no such denomination had existed in standard Italian coinage.