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500 Forint Interest Paying Legal Tender Treasury Bill
| Issuer | Hungarian Ministry of Finance |
|---|---|
| Year | 1848 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Landerer és Heckenast Nyomda, Pest |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Kamatos utalvány Ötszáz forintról ezüst pénzben, három huszast számítva egy forintra Buda 1848 500 forintra ezüst részre 500 Gulden in Silbermünze 500 fiorini in argento con interesse di 3 per cento. 500 Zlatych MAGYAR ÁLLAD UTALVÁNY |
| Reverse description | Plain cream paper with a centrally printed interest calculation table titled 'Kamat-számítás', arranged in multiple columns and rows listing accrued interest values. No vignette or decorative border is present; the layout is strictly utilitarian, consistent with a fiscal reference table printed by letterpress. |
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| Comments |
This note belongs to the first wave of Hungarian paper money issued under the revolutionary government of 1848 — the Batthyány cabinet's attempt to fund an independent Hungarian state while the Habsburg court still technically retained sovereignty. The Ministry of Finance, newly established under Lajos Kossuth, authorized these interest-bearing treasury bills as a stopgap before a proper national bank could be organized. The "interest paying" designation was genuine: holders were entitled to 5% annual interest, a detail that made these acceptable to a merchant class deeply skeptical of unsecured paper.
Landerer és Heckenast, the Pest firm that printed them, was primarily a book and periodical publisher — they had printed the Twelve Points on the first day of the March revolution. Security printing was not their specialty, and the relatively simple typography reflects that constraint.