See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

500 Drachmai

Issuer Bank of Greece
Year 1968
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Third modern drachma (1954-2001)
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description Olive tint on multicolor underprint. The lower left vignette reproduces an ancient plaque from Knossos with a wild goat and its kid rendered in the Minoan artistic tradition, while fruits appear at bottom center. Denomination numerals and bank title inscriptions in Greek are distributed across the design with guilloche patterning filling the field.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Watermark
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

This note was issued under the military junta that seized power in April 1967, and the Bank of Greece continued operating under strict government oversight throughout the regime. The 500 Drachmai denomination was the highest circulating value in the series at the time, making it a note handled primarily in commercial transactions rather than everyday retail use.

Printed domestically at Holargos rather than contracted abroad — as Greek notes frequently had been in earlier decades — this series reflects the junta-era push toward self-sufficiency in state printing operations. The engravers Orphanos and Angelopoulos were both staff engravers at the Holargos facility.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE