10 Cents Military Payment Certificate

Military Payment Certificates were introduced in September 1946 to replace the "yellow seal" invasion currency used by American troops overseas. The core problem they were designed to solve was black market arbitrage — soldiers converting military scrip into local currency at inflated rates, destabilizing postoccupation economies in Germany, Japan, and Austria simultaneously. This Series 461, the first MPC series issued, went into circulation in 1947.

Forbes Lithograph, a Boston commercial printer, was an unusual choice for security printing — the firm was better known for trade catalogs and packaging work. The government's postwar demand for currency production had simply outpaced the capacity of more specialized security printers.