25 Drachmai

The Banque de Crète was established in 1899 under an unusual international arrangement — the island was nominally still Ottoman territory but under Great Power occupation, administered by the four protecting powers (Britain, France, Italy, Russia) following the insurrections of 1896–1897. The bank was granted a concession to issue currency before Cretan sovereignty was even settled, making its notes among the more politically peculiar instruments of the Aegean.

Bradbury Wilkinson produced the series across a fourteen-year window that spans Cretan autonomy, the Balkan Wars, and eventual union with Greece in 1913 — meaning later-dated examples technically circulated under a government that had already ceased to exist as a separate entity.