If this banknote could talk, I’d imagine it would say, “We just lost a major war and can barely afford such luxuries as currency.”
Italy, 1951. Small in value — 50 lira, or the equivalent of about 8 U.S. cents, at least as of the mid-50s, which is when my parents picked it up in change. Must adjust for inflation, however, so theoretically in today’s money that many lira is the equivalent of a whopping 75 U.S. cents, or about 0.68 euros. Apparently this note and the 100-lira were replaced by coins not much later in the 1950s.

The Italian lira was a famously small currency. I checked the 1983 exchange rate not long ago, and found that the lira gradually lost ground to the dollar that year. In July, when I was in country, it was about 1,500 lira to the dollar.

I recorded a few prices in the diary I kept that summer, noting (for example) that the admission to the Forum was L 4,000, or about $2.60, which seemed reasonable (and would be about $6.70 now). I wondered how much the price has been jacked up since then. But I didn’t have to wonder long. I looked it up, and now it’s 12 euros, or about $13.20, though that includes admission to the Colosseum as well. I don’t remember whether I paid separately for that, or at all.

The note is also small in size. Interestingly, exactly four inches long and two-and-a-half inches tall. Odd, I would have thought that the sides measure evenly in centimeters rather than inches.