500 Lei

Bradbury Wilkinson held the contract for several Romanian National Bank issues through the interwar period, and the P#43 series ran across an unusually long window — production spanning the years before and during the early phase of Romania's wartime political realignment. By 1940, when King Carol II abdicated under combined German and Soviet pressure, notes from this print run were still circulating. They didn't need to be withdrawn immediately; the regime changed faster than the currency.

Bradbury Wilkinson's intaglio work was consistently among the finest available to smaller European central banks. Romania's choice of a London printer rather than a domestic or French one reflects the financial relationships of the 1930s more than any technical limitation at home.