500 Pesos 'C' Foreign Exchange Certificate-Round 'C'

Cuba's Foreign Exchange Certificate series was a parallel currency system introduced in 1981 to capture hard currency from tourists and diplomats while keeping it separate from the peso economy available to Cuban nationals. The "C" series, distinguished by its round overprint, replaced the earlier "A" series and was itself eventually superseded — the entire FEC program was finally abolished in 2004 when Cuba unified its currency system around the convertible peso.

Státní Tiskárna Cenin, the Czechoslovak state security printer, produced Cuban banknotes throughout the Cold War period, a natural pairing given the two countries' close political alignment after 1959. The 500 Peso denomination sat at the top of the FEC range — an enormous face value in a system where most transactions involved single-digit certificates.