500 Rials - Rezā Pahlavī 1st. portrait

Bank Melli Iran was established by act of parliament in 1928, and the early note series issued under Reza Shah was a deliberate assertion of centralized financial control — the country had previously relied on the Imperial Bank of Persia, a British-chartered institution, to issue currency. These first high-denomination notes were produced by the American Bank Note Company in New York rather than any European firm, a pointed departure from the colonial-era arrangements that had kept Iranian monetary affairs under foreign influence.

Pick 23 is among the rarest of the early Bank Melli issues. The 500 Rial denomination saw limited genuine circulation given its value relative to prevailing wages, and surviving examples in any grade are genuinely scarce.