500 Korún

The Slovak State's 500 Korún of 1939 was printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York — a striking logistical detail given that Slovakia had declared independence from Czechoslovakia in March of that year under heavy German pressure. Commissioning a prestigious American security printer while simultaneously operating as a Nazi client state was not unusual for the period; several Axis-aligned governments continued doing so until US entry into the war made such arrangements impossible.

Pick #2 is notably scarcer than Pick #1 of the same series. The short window between Slovak independence and the eventual wartime disruption to transatlantic printing contracts kept total issued quantities low.