500 Manat

Turkmenistan's 2005 high-denomination series was issued under Saparmurat Niyazov, whose personality cult so thoroughly dominated the republic's institutions that the central bank itself operated largely as an instrument of state theater. The 500 Manat sat at the top of a currency system rendered nearly meaningless by chronic inflation — by the mid-2000s, everyday transactions routinely required enormous bundles of lower notes, and this denomination still represented relatively little purchasing power in real terms.

De La Rue's Gateshead facility handled production, applying a security thread and watermark to cotton substrate — adequate specification for a note whose issuing government was replaced, along with the entire currency series, following Niyazov's death in December 2006.