Thanks for organizing such competition :-) It gave me an opportunity to share my hobby with the world at large. You are right that its exotic and sort of hermetic as well because majority of those who collect such things are somehow linked to banking, finance or legal professions. The graphics were important in those days - first of all there were aesthetic reasons, then it also served as security feature (to make forgeries more complicated) and last but not least it served as advertising medium promoting certain industries or branches of economy.