500 Rials Provisional Issue, Type 1

This note belongs to the first wave of post-revolutionary overprints, in which the provisional government of the Islamic Republic moved quickly to obscure the Shah's portrait on existing De La Rue-printed stock rather than wait for entirely new designs. The expedient worked politically but created an immediate collector distinction: Type 1 overprints vary noticeably in placement and ink density, a direct consequence of the rushed, decentralized application process in early 1979.

Bank Markazi had been using De La Rue as its primary printer through the imperial period, and the existing banknote inventory was simply too large to destroy outright.