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500 Rupees
| Issuer | Government of Ceylon |
|---|---|
| Year | 1926 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | De La Rue (Thomas de la Rue; Thomas De La Rue & Co.; TDLR), London, United Kingdom (1821-date) |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio printing on green guilloche underprint. The serial number is repeated four times in red ink across the note face. The text of the promise to pay is set within an ornate letterpress border with fine guilloche work filling the underprint field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Blank, unprinted reverse. |
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| Comments |
The Government of Ceylon's high-denomination currency in the 1920s was largely a tool of colonial fiscal administration rather than everyday commerce — a 500 Rupee note was many months' wages for most Ceylonese, and these circulated almost exclusively within banking and mercantile channels. De La Rue produced the series in London under contract arrangements typical of Crown Colony currency management, with the Currency Board in Colombo controlling issue quantities tightly.
P#28 is genuinely rare in any grade. High-denomination colonial notes of this period that survived did so largely through bank archives, not public hands, and Ceylon's tropical humidity was particularly unkind to paper stock over the following decades.