20 000 Dram

Armenia's 1999 banknote series, of which this is the highest denomination, was produced during a period of severe post-Soviet monetary instability — the Dram itself had only been introduced in 1993, replacing the Russian ruble after independence. Thomas De La Rue's involvement gave the series a level of security specification that the Armenian central bank could not have sourced domestically at that stage.

The hologram strip on this denomination was a deliberate counterfeit deterrent aimed specifically at the high-value note, which circulated in a cash-dependent economy where banking infrastructure remained thin well into the 2000s.