5 Zlotych Bilet Zdawkowy

The Bilet Zdawkowy — literally "exchange ticket" — was a subsidiary currency instrument used by the Polish Treasury to address the chronic shortage of small-denomination coinage in the mid-1920s. These were not banknotes in the strict sense; they were issued by the Ministry of Treasury rather than the central bank, reflecting Poland's still-fragmented monetary infrastructure in the years following the hyperinflationary crisis that had destroyed the earlier marka.

The Polska Wytwórnia Papierów Wartościowych, established in Warsaw in 1919, was itself a product of the young republic's drive to control its own security printing. This note is among the earlier domestic productions of that facility.