350 Lire Banca Sella - Biella

The 350 Lire denomination is itself the story here. Italian banks were authorized to issue fiduciary notes during the acute coin shortage of the 1970s — a shortage so severe that businesses routinely substituted candy, tokens, and telephone slugs as change. The Banca Sella, a small Piedmontese private bank headquartered in Biella, issued this note under the 1975 emergency framework that allowed credit institutions to circulate low-denomination paper as a temporary substitute for missing coinage.

The 350 Lire face value exists nowhere else in Italian monetary history — chosen to match specific retail transaction needs rather than any conventional denomination logic.