Women On Banknotes

Comoros 500 francs

5 and 10 gulden from Suriname

Nice low S/N on the Five "Owatchman"

Great French note. @erafjel

Guinea 10,000 francs guineans

Great-looking note! Any idea what R.1993 and 270 mean?



Very colorful!

Very nice!

Haven't looked at this thread for a while, so I didn't see this question until now.

The R.1993 and 270 are basically serial numbers. French bank notes used to have an intricate system for numbering. The basis is to use the letters of the alphabet (skipping I, so using 25 letters A-Z). This note uses R. For each letter one prints from 1,000 - 1,000,000 notes. This type of note uses 1,000 numbers per letter and has number 270. With just 1,000 numbers per letter we will run out of letter + number combinations pretty soon, so therefore one starts over again with letter A once all numbers are used for A-Z. To avoid duplication of numbers, we add a number telling for which time we use a letter. That is what the number 1993 after R says: This is the 1993rd time we use letter R.

Then there is another number in the middle of the note: 49816270. This is a control number calculated from the letter R and the two numbers 1993 and 270.

Finally, the date 31=7=1913 (July 31, 1913) is the date when printing of this series of bank notes was ordered (not the date it was printed). The A before and after the date indicates that this is the 1st series of notes using one round of A-Z letters ordered this date; the 2nd round will have letter B here etc.