1 Anna WWII Cash Coupon

Gondal was a small princely state in the Kathiawar peninsula of what is now Gujarat, and like several other Indian princely states during the Second World War, it faced acute small-change shortages as metal was diverted to the war effort. These cash coupons were a local stopgap — issued by the durbar rather than a chartered bank, which is why they fall outside standard Pick numbering entirely.

The anna denomination places this squarely in the fractional emergency category. Princely state issues of this kind were typically printed on minimal budgets, often by local presses with no security printing infrastructure, and survival rates are poor simply because nobody thought to preserve them.