500 Lira Brown

Bradbury Wilkinson's relationship with the Turkish central bank stretches back decades, and this 500 Lira note from 1953 is among the more substantial denominations they produced for Ankara during the early republic's aggressive industrialization push under Adnan Menderes. The choice to retain a British security printer well into the 1950s reflected both established trust and Turkey's limited domestic printing capacity at the denomination's scale.

P#170 is notably scarcer in circulated grades than its face value might suggest — high-denomination notes of this period were frequently hoarded rather than spent, yet paper quality and storage conditions in Turkish households of the era were unforgiving. The watermark remains the sole mechanical security feature, which was already conservative practice by 1953 standards.