50 Marka

Estonia's Treasury issued this note in 1919, during the Independence War against both Soviet Russian and German Baltic forces — a conflict the newly declared republic was fighting on two fronts simultaneously. The financial infrastructure was improvised under pressure. Estonia had no central bank yet; the Treasury itself was issuing currency because the Bank of Estonia would not be established until 1919's end.

The marka was pegged loosely to the Finnish markka at first, a practical inheritance from the currency confusion following the collapse of the Russian imperial ruble system. Pick #25 belongs to the earliest stratum of independent Estonian paper money, printed domestically under genuinely austere wartime conditions.