20 Francs 2nd series, type 3

The Swiss National Bank's early note issues required three signatures — one from the Bank Council presidency, one from the Directorate, and one from the local board — a tripartite structure reflecting the SNB's decentralized founding compromise between Zurich and Bern factions. The sheer number of signature combinations on this type is a direct consequence: as personnel rotated across those three seats between 1923 and 1929, each new combination produced a catalogued variant, making signature collecting a discipline unto itself for this series.

Orell Füssli had been printing securities and maps since the sixteenth century, and the SNB relied on them exclusively for early note production. The series was demonetized well before World War II, and surviving examples — particularly the later 1929-dated issues — are considerably scarcer than their earlier counterparts.