25 Korun

The 1953 Czechoslovak currency reform was one of the most punishing monetary transformations in postwar Eastern Europe. Announced without warning on 30 May 1953, the reform exchanged old koruny for new at rates that varied depending on amount held — small savings converted at 5:1, larger holdings at 50:1, effectively wiping out accumulated private wealth overnight. This note entered circulation through that reform, not as a replacement issue in any ordinary sense, but as an instrument of deliberate economic leveling under the newly consolidated communist state.

Státní tiskárna cenin, the state security printing works in Prague, handled the full series domestically — unusual for a Soviet-aligned state in this period, when satellite countries more commonly relied on Soviet presses for sensitive currency work.