500 Pesos

The Central Bank of the Philippines was established only in 1949, replacing the Philippine Treasury and the pre-war currency board arrangement that had tied the peso directly to the U.S. dollar at a fixed rate. These early De La Rue issues were part of the first sovereign Philippine currency series — produced abroad because the Bangko Sentral had no domestic printing capacity yet. The 500 Peso denomination was the highest in the initial series, intended primarily for interbank settlement rather than retail circulation, which partly explains why surviving examples with any handling are relatively uncommon.

De La Rue's watermark on this series is a simple but clean execution, consistent with their standard security specification of the period.