Catalog
20 Litu
| Issuer | Lietuvos Bankas (Bank of Lithuania) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1991 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Dark brown and green on violet and tan underprint. Intaglio portrait vignette of poet Jonas Maironis at right, with guilloche patterning across the note field. Denomination and issuer inscriptions appear in Lithuanian, with the date 1991 at lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 1991 20 DVIDEŠIMT LITŲ J MAIRONIS VALDYBOS PIRMININKAS LIETUVOS BANKAS (Translation: 1991 Twenty Litu J Maironis Chairman of the Board Bank of Lithuania) |
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| Comments |
Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence in March 1990, but the transition away from Soviet roubles was neither immediate nor clean. This note was part of the first post-Soviet Lithuanian issue, designed and printed in the United States while the country was still navigating the political and monetary fallout of disentangling itself from Moscow. The talonas — the transitional coupon currency — ran concurrently for a period, making the early Litas issues a patchwork of parallel systems.
United States Banknote Corporation, which printed this series, filed for bankruptcy in 1995, leaving several sovereign contracts mid-stream — though Lithuania's notes had long since been delivered by then.