500 Euros Sarkozy

The NPA — founded in February 2009 out of the wreckage of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire — issued this satirical note during its launch period as a piece of political agitprop directed at Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency. It is not legal tender and was never intended to be, functioning instead as a propaganda broadside in the tradition of French far-left street printing.

The inclusion of an actual watermark is the one detail worth pausing on — an unusual production cost for a novelty item, suggesting a deliberate effort to mimic official currency closely enough to make the joke land.