Catalog
4 Krune overprint on 1 Dinar
| Issuer | Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes |
|---|---|
| Year | 1919 |
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| Value | 4 Krune |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette presents a portrait of Miloš Obilić, the celebrated Serbian hero, wearing a traditional helmet. The note is a revalued Serbian 1 Dinar issue, overstamped with the trilingual surcharge reading КУРНЕ / 4 KRUNE / KRONE, though notably all examples of this denomination carry the misspelled Cyrillic form КУРНЕ rather than КРУНЕ — this error appears consistently across the entire issue and is considered the only known variety. The overprint is applied in a contrasting ink over the original banknote design. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse of the underlying Serbian 1 Dinar note bears the denomination inscription UN DINAR alongside the standard reverse design of that issue. The trilingual surcharge overprint КУРНЕ / 4 KRUNE / KRONE is applied here as well, with the same consistent misspelling of the Cyrillic text present on all known examples of this denomination. |
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| Comments |
When the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed in December 1918, it inherited a monetary patchwork. Former Austro-Hungarian territories were still awash in kronen-denominated paper, while Serbian dinar notes circulated in the south. This overprint — converting 1 Dinar to 4 Krune at a fixed rate — was a stopgap measure to bring the two systems into rough parity while a unified currency framework was still months away from implementation.
The underlying note was a Banque de France printing, which gives the paper stock and impression a noticeably higher quality than much of the provisional currency circulating in the region at the time.