Catalog
500 Franken
| Issuer | Spar- & Leih-Cassa des Kantons Luzern |
|---|---|
| Year | 1876 |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | Pink and black intaglio-printed note with a central large denomination inscription 'Fünfhundert Franken' beneath the issuer title 'Die Spar- & Leih-Cassa des Kantons Luzern' and emission date 'Emission vom 31. October 1876'. Two oval portrait vignettes flank the central text — a female figure in classical dress at left and a bearded male figure at right — while two smaller landscape vignettes at the lower corners depict lakeside townscapes, and a central lower vignette shows a reclining lion. The denomination '500' appears in ornate guilloche panels at both upper corners. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Die Spar- & Leih-Cassa DES KANTONS LUZERN zahlt dem Ueberbringer Fünfhundert Franken Emission vom 31. October 1876 BUCHHALTER VERWALTER CASSIER 500 |
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The Spar- & Leih-Cassa des Kantons Luzern was a cantonal savings and lending institution, not a central bank — its note-issuing activity placed it among the dozens of Swiss cantonal and private banks whose circulation rights were steadily curtailed following the Federal Banking Act of 1881 and ultimately terminated with the creation of the Swiss National Bank in 1907. By the time federal consolidation was complete, surviving notes from smaller cantonal issuers had largely been redeemed and pulped, which accounts for the genuine scarcity of high-denomination examples like this one.
Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. handled the printing from their London works — a common arrangement for Swiss provincial issuers who lacked access to domestic security printers of comparable technical capability at the time.