2 Drachmai

Greece entered the First World War in fractured circumstances — the so-called National Schism split the country between the royalist government of King Constantine I and the Venizelist provisional government in Thessaloniki. The Ministry of Finance, not the Bank of Greece, issued these low-denomination emergency notes precisely because normal banking functions had broken down under that political rupture. Treasury-issued small notes of this period were a stopgap against the acute shortage of coin, which had been hoarded or melted as the war disrupted silver supplies.

The printer, Aspilti Brothers, was a Corfu-based commercial printing firm — not a specialist security printer. That origin matters: the notes lack the intaglio depth of a proper currency press, and counterfeiting was a known problem with the series.