25 Dalasis

The Gambia's 1996 series was the first to introduce a security thread across the denomination range — a relatively late adoption for an anglophone West African issuer with close institutional ties to De La Rue, who had printed Gambian notes since independence. Thomas De La Rue's London facility handled the full production run, and the watermark and embedded thread combination reflects the mid-1990s security upgrade package the printer was rolling out across multiple small-nation contracts simultaneously.

Pick 18 replaced the earlier 25 Dalasi type from the late 1980s as part of a broader redenomination-adjacent redesign, though the Dalasi itself remained stable — the change was cosmetic and security-driven rather than crisis-prompted.