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500 000 Drachmai Agricultural Treasury Bond
| Issuer | Bank of Greece |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Reference(s) | P#138 |
| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in olive-brown and yellow tones on cream paper, with an ornate guilloche border framing the entire face. At the top, the issuer's name appears in a rectangular panel, below which the legend ΤΑΜΕΙΑΚΟΝ ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΟΝ (Treasury Bond) is set in large bold lettering. The large denomination numeral 500,000 is centered within a sunburst underprint, flanked by additional text specifying the bond's purpose for the concentration of agricultural products, with the date EN ΑΘΗΝΑΙΣ ΤΗ 27 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ 1942 and two manuscript signatures of the issuing officials appearing in the lower portion. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | ΤΡΑΠΕΖΑ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ 500.000 |
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| Comments |
Greece's wartime occupation authorities — the Axis-installed puppet government — financed the Wehrmacht's local supply needs in part by forcing the Bank of Greece to print at extraordinary volumes. By 1942, inflation was accelerating toward the hyperinflationary collapse that would peak in late 1944, when the drachma effectively ceased to function as a currency. This bond-format denomination, technically classed as an agricultural treasury instrument, reflects the administrative fiction of treating emergency inflationary paper as structured debt rather than outright money creation.
The "Agricultural" designation linked these issues nominally to rural credit programs, but in practice the distinction between bond and banknote had collapsed entirely by this stage of the occupation.