10 Tālā

Samoa's 1985 note series arrived during a period of significant economic pressure, as the tālā had already weathered two devaluations in the early 1980s tied to IMF structural adjustment negotiations. Thomas De La Rue's involvement was standard for Pacific island issuers of the period — the firm handled a large portion of Commonwealth and associated-state printings out of London throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

The security thread on this issue is a plain unpatterned type, predating the encoded and windowed threads De La Rue introduced across many client currencies in the late 1980s.