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500 Drachmai Italian occupation
| Issuer | Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1941 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 150 × 80 mm |
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| Obverse description | At left centre, an intaglio vignette presents a classical bust in profile, generally identified as Augustus of the Prima Porta type, set within a guilloche-bordered frame. To the right, bilingual text in Italian and Greek designates the note as legal tender for the Ionian Islands, with the denomination rendered in both DRACME and ΔΡΑΧΜΑΙ. A Greek key meander border frames the entire face, printed in rose-pink. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A central intaglio vignette reproduces a classical bas-relief of two equestrian figures in vigorous motion, possibly the Dioscuri or cavalry warriors, printed in rose-pink. The composition is enclosed within a double guilloche border with the Greek key meander motif repeated on all four sides, and the denomination numeral 500 appears in each corner. |
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| Comments |
The Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia was not a bank in any meaningful sense — it was a financial instrument of occupation, established by Italian military authorities in 1941 to extract resources from Greece without directly inflating the Reichskreditkasse system already operating in the north. These notes were issued alongside, and in competition with, German occupation currency, a dual-exploitation arrangement that accelerated one of the worst hyperinflationary collapses in modern European history.
The Istituto Poligrafico in Rome printed the series to a reasonably high technical standard, which only sharpened Greek resentment — occupation money that looked credible while the country starved.