500 Ðồng

The National Bank of Vietnam was established only in 1951, and this 1955 series represented its first substantive effort to issue notes printed to international security standards rather than relying on the French colonial piastre infrastructure that had preceded it. The American Bank Note Company contract placed Saigon's monetary apparatus firmly within the Western camp at a moment when the Geneva Accords had just partitioned the country and Ngô Đình Diệm was consolidating power in the South.

P#10 is the highest denomination in the ABNC-printed 1955 series, making it the note most likely to have been held rather than spent — high-value notes in Vietnam during this period circulated poorly at the street level.