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20 Cents Foreign Exchange Certificate
| Issuer | Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A. |
|---|---|
| Year | 1969 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 20 Cents (20 Centów) (0.20) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Green note with fine guilloche border and light green underprint throughout. Central oval guilloche vignette carries the denomination $0,20$ in orange letterpress; the large "P" monogram of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki appears above. Bilingual text panels flank the vignette, with the Polish denomination DWADZIEŚCIA CENTÓW in red across the lower register and the issuing bank name and date along the bottom margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | $0,20$ BONY TOWAROWE BANKU POLSKA KASA OPIEKI S.A NIE PODLEGAJĄ UMORZENIU I W ZAMIAN BONÓW UTRACONYCH NIE WYDAJE SIĘ DOKUMENTÓW ZASTĘPCZYCH |
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| Comments |
Bank Polska Kasa Opieki — PKO — issued these Foreign Exchange Certificates as a mechanism to capture hard currency inside Poland's closed economy. Foreigners and Poles receiving remittances from abroad were effectively required to exchange dollars, marks, or other Western currencies for these certificates, which could then be spent only at Pewex stores — the state-run hard currency shops that stocked goods unavailable through normal socialist retail channels.
The system was nakedly extractive: it kept real currency out of private hands while giving the state access to Western funds it desperately needed. The 1969 series was printed domestically by PWPW in Warsaw, unusual for satellite-state hard currency instruments of the period, which were often contracted abroad.