500 Afghanis

Pick 27 was issued under Zahir Shah's government, and Bradbury Wilkinson — then among the most technically accomplished security printers in the world — produced the plates in London. The firm's intaglio work for colonial and semi-colonial clients during this period was consistently high quality, and Afghanistan was a regular customer for its higher-denomination notes through these years.

The watermark is the sole documented security feature, which was not unusual for the period but left these notes relatively exposed to local forgery. Afghanistan's banking infrastructure in 1939 was still thin outside Kabul, and high-denomination notes of this kind moved primarily through merchant and government channels rather than retail circulation.