500 Cruzeiros 3rd edition

Brazil's 500 cruzeiro note had a troubled final few years. By 1990, the country was deep into the hyperinflationary spiral that would eventually force the Collor administration to freeze private bank accounts in March of that year — one of the most drastic monetary interventions in Brazilian peacetime history. Notes of this denomination, which would have represented meaningful purchasing power just a few years earlier, were being spent like small change by the time this edition circulated.

The third edition designation under Pick 230 reflects Casa da Moeda's ongoing plate revisions to manage production costs and deter counterfeiting as denominations were repeatedly outpaced by inflation. The cruzeiro itself was abolished in 1990, replaced by the cruzeiro novo — though that name was quickly shortened back to cruzeiro, adding to the considerable confusion of the period.