10 Kopeks

The Russian-American Company was a chartered trading monopoly — Russia's equivalent of the East India Company — operating out of Sitka (then Novo-Arkhangelsk) in Russian Alaska. These low-denomination paper notes circulated as a scrip currency among company employees, Indigenous workers, and settlers in the colonies, where coined money was chronically scarce and shipping it from St. Petersburg made little commercial sense.

The thirty-six-year issue window reflects not a single printing but periodic reissues as stocks wore out. Leather scrip had preceded these paper issues; by 1816 the company had settled on paper as more practical. Redemption was only ever guaranteed within company-controlled territory, which gave the notes a captive circulation by design.