Catalog
50 Litu
| Issuer | Lietuvos Bankas |
|---|---|
| Year | 1922 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Dark green and brown note with a portrait vignette of Grand Duke Gediminas at right, framed by intricate guilloche work. The city arms of Kaunas, Vilnius, and Klaipėda appear at left, accompanied by the denomination and issue text. The overall design reflects early Lithuanian national symbolism rendered in a classical intaglio style. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | LIETUVOS BANKO BANKNOTAS 50 LITŲ BANKNOTŲ PADIRBIMAS ISTATYMU BAUDZIAMAS (Translation: Lithuanian Bank Banknote Fifty Litu Forgery of Banknotes Punished by Law) |
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| Comments |
The 1922 Lithuanian 50 Litu belongs to the foundational series issued following Lithuania's monetary reform of that year, which replaced the transitional talonas with the litas at a fixed rate of 100 talonai to 1 litas. The new currency was a deliberate assertion of economic independence, pegged to gold and designed to stabilize a young state that had been operating under occupation-era monetary chaos since 1915.
Pick 19 is among the scarcer denominations from this first litas series. The printing arrangements for early Lithuanian state notes involved foreign contractors, as the country had no domestic security printing capability at the time.