500 Dollars

The 1935 Bank of Canada series was the institution's first — the Bank itself had only been established by the Bank of Canada Act in 1934. The $500 note (Pick 54) is among the highest denominations issued in that inaugural series, and very few entered circulation in any meaningful sense. High-value notes of this period were used primarily for interbank settlements, not retail commerce, and most were retired and destroyed well before public demand for collectible paper money created any incentive to preserve them.

Survivors are genuinely rare. The Canadian Bank Note Company printed the series in Ottawa, making this one of the earliest fully domestically produced issues for the new central bank.