25 Gulden

Pick 21 had a remarkably long run for a single design type — the series spans from 1860 to 1919, with plates and formats surviving well past what most institutions would tolerate. The note printed on 30 April 1945 carries a date of almost grotesque historical coincidence: that was the day Hitler died in Berlin, with Allied forces already operating freely across much of the Netherlands.

The Dutch hunger winter of 1944–45 had devastated the occupied north, and De Nederlandsche Bank was printing currency under conditions of extreme institutional stress. Notes from this final wartime printing are sometimes found with handling damage consistent with emergency use rather than normal bank distribution.