1 Anna WWII Cash Coupon

Dhar was a princely state in central India under the Paramountcy of the British Crown, and its state bank issued these small-denomination cash coupons during the Second World War years — almost certainly in response to the acute small-change shortage that plagued much of British India when coin metal was diverted to the war effort. The Reserve Bank of India and the broader colonial administration tolerated such local emergency scrip from princely states, though it had no validity beyond state borders.

At one anna — one-sixteenth of a rupee — these were purely transactional tokens, almost disposable by design. Survival rates are low.