1 Rupee - Tribhuvana Bir Bikram

Nepal's shift to billon for this issue reflects the post-war silver shortage that pressured mints across Asia in the late 1940s, with the .333 fineness representing a significant debasement from earlier rupee coinage struck at higher silver content under the same monarch. Tribhuvan himself was no passive figurehead — just four years after this coin circulated, he would engineer a political masterstroke, taking refuge in the Indian embassy in Kathmandu and effectively forcing the collapse of the Rana oligarchy that had reduced Nepal's kings to ceremonial prisoners for over a century.