20 Baht - Rama IX Series 9 Type II, young portrait, black serials

Thailand's postwar currency stabilization relied heavily on De La Rue throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s, and this note belongs to a transitional moment: the young portrait of Rama IX — Bhumibol Adulyadej, who had only acceded to the throne in 1946 at age eighteen — replaced an older likeness as the king's features were still being established in official iconography. The "Type II" distinction within this series separates issues by serial color, with black serials preceding the red-serial variant that followed later in the print run.

Pick 72 is genuinely scarcer than its red-serial successor, P#73.