500 Lei

Moldova's 1992 banknote series was issued in extraordinary haste following the declaration of independence in 1991 and the near-total collapse of Soviet ruble supply chains. The Banca Națională a Moldovei had existed for barely a year when these notes entered circulation, and the infrastructure to produce a fully secured national currency simply wasn't in place — which is why the 1992 series relies on watermark alone, with none of the metallic threads or UV-reactive inks that would appear in later Moldovan issues.

The Lei denomination itself carried political weight: the name deliberately echoed Romanian currency, distancing Moldova from its Soviet past.