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1 Pound, Fanning Island Plantations
| Issuer | Fanning Island Plantations, Ltd. |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Pound |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Green letterpress voucher on plain paper with clipped corners, set against a wavy-line guilloche underprint across the entire field. The issuer name and place of issue appear at the top, with the denomination in large bold type at centre and the currency designation below. A handwritten serial number in red ink appears upper right, with the Manager's manuscript signature and printed title at lower right. A redemption clause in italic script runs across the lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Completely unprinted; plain paper with no text, vignette, or design elements of any kind. |
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| Comments |
Fanning Island (now Tabuaeran, part of Kiribati) was a coconut plantation owned by Emmanuel Rotoiti's family interests and operated commercially under British license. When Japanese advances in the Pacific severed normal supply lines in 1942, the island's small workforce — largely Gilbertese contract laborers — had no access to any recognized currency. Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. issued these notes purely as internal scrip to maintain a functioning wage and store economy on an isolated atoll with no banking infrastructure whatsoever.
The issue is among the most geographically remote private scrip of the Second World War. Redemption outside the plantation was never a realistic proposition.