2 Lek

The Banka Kombëtare e Shqipnis — the National Bank of Albania — was an Italian-controlled institution from its founding in 1925, so by 1940 the note was effectively an instrument of Italian colonial financial administration following Mussolini's April 1939 annexation of the country. Rome printing Albanian currency was not a wartime expedient but the established norm for this series.

Pick 9 is the lowest denomination of the 1940 issue. At that scale, notes tended to circulate hard and survive poorly.