Obverse:
Two young Greek women dressed in traditional attire, one is holding a water jug and the other one is holding a sheath of wheat.
Reverse:
Lion of Chaeronea, erected by the Thebans in memory of their dead after the battle of Chaeronea.
Watermark:
Archaic head of a man
Comments:
This note was never issued, but they were later overprinted in Athens as 1 000 Drachmai in 1941. However, a ship carrying 5 million of these unissued notes was sunk off the coast of Monemvasia in 1941, and a large quantity of notes fell into the hands of locals. Many people forged the overprint on these notes to pass them off into circulation. One of the best ways to recognize if overprint has been forged is the serial number prefix, as these were the notes aboard the ship, and none of the notes from these prefixes entered circulation with official overprint:
No genuine notes from outside these prefixes (aside from potential error notes) exist without overprint. Any notes with overprint from these prefixes are known to be counterfeit. However, counterfeiters realized that authorities knew which prefixes of notes had been on the ship, so to avoid being caught, some counterfeiters changed the serial number prefixes of notes with some success.
