500 Gulden

The Oesterreichische National Zettel Bank was itself a crisis institution, founded in 1816 specifically to address the wreckage left by the Bancozettel collapse and the 1811 state bankruptcy, which had wiped out roughly 80% of paper money values through forced conversion. This 500 Gulden note belongs to the bank's earliest emission — high-denomination paper issued into a public that had just been burned badly by state-issued notes and had every reason to distrust anything printed.

Survival rate for this issue is extremely low. The denomination alone would have kept most examples in commercial rather than retail hands, reducing everyday handling but also concentrating losses when firms failed or records were destroyed.