500 Francs

The Banque de Madagascar et des Comores was itself a transitional institution — created in 1950 to replace the Caisse Centrale de la France d'Outre-Mer as the currency authority for both territories, it existed for barely a decade before Malagasy independence in 1960 forced another restructuring. This note falls squarely within that interregnum period of French colonial monetary administration.

Clément Serveau was a prolific designer for the Banque de France's overseas issues, and Armanelli's intaglio engraving on the obverse is characteristically fine — the Banque de France's printing standards for colonial paper were, if anything, more consistent than for some metropolitan issues of the same period.