A lovely Nicolai Grigorescu designed banknote.

Designed by Clement Serveau, French artist that also designed many other Romanian and French banknotes.

WWII brought inflation to Romania, even more after the end of the war. Often times inflation was so fast that there really wasn't time to design new banknotes with new designs, so old designs were borrowed from the past, in this instance this design was first used on the 500 Lei note beginning in 1916-1917, a design that made several appearances on Romanian money. Notice also the fascinating throwback to indenting on the left side, this was common with banknotes in the 18th centuries, and largely died out by the 19th.



And the happy rural farmers on the reverse are a very common theme of Romanian currency from before 1947.

Sure. After 1947 commies nationalized the land and the farmers were pauperized.

those were the good ole days!!

Ah, but that wasn't the end of it, cause then some fool became president of Romania, and drove it even further into the middle ages by forcibly relocating millions of people out of private homes and into nothingness flats. Meanwhile he built himself a huge palace in Bucharest, and stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. The fools wife was the real leader of the show apparently, and he was just her puppet.

women can be very mean!! making us men do stuff we dont wanna do!! but its life..

I don't think you have met mean woman until you meet a communist woman, been there done that, no again please.

Great notes with great themes.