50 Latu

Latvia's 50 Latu of 1934 was printed by Thomas De La Rue during a politically charged moment — Kārlis Ulmanis had just dissolved parliament and assumed dictatorial powers in May of that year. The note's production in London reflected a deliberate policy of the Latvijas Banka to use high-security foreign printers, insulating currency production from domestic instability.

Pick 20 is scarcer than its lower-denomination counterparts in the series, largely because 50 Latu represented a substantial sum for most Latvians in the mid-1930s. Notes of this value circulated infrequently, yet attrition through the Soviet occupation of 1940 — which invalidated and largely destroyed Latvian currency stocks — was severe.