500 Francs - type 1863 printed in blue

The type 1863 500 Francs marks the Banque de France's shift toward blue-tinted printing at this denomination — a deliberate counterfeit deterrent, since the photographic reproduction techniques then emerging struggled to capture blue ink faithfully. Jacques-Jean Barre had died in 1855, so his contribution here was inherited plate work rather than a fresh commission; Pannemaker and Harang completed what became one of the more technically involved intaglio productions the Banque undertook in-house during the Second Empire period.

Fay A35 examples with legible dates from the early 1860s are considerably scarcer than later printings from the same type, which ran well into the 1870s.