500 Vatu

Vanuatu's currency only came into existence in 1981, two years after independence, when the vatu replaced the joint New Hebrides franc that had circulated under the unusual Anglo-French Condominium — a colonial arrangement so administratively peculiar that the territory ran parallel British and French court systems, police forces, and currencies simultaneously. The Reserve Bank of Vanuatu was established specifically to issue a unified national currency free of that dual authority.

Three signature combinations appear across this series, tracking successive changes in central bank leadership over more than a decade of issue. The shift from a solid to a segmented security thread marks the boundary between the earlier and later printings — a useful diagnostic when the signatures themselves are difficult to read.