Catalog
100 Pruta Emergency Fractional Issue
| Issuer | Government of Israel |
|---|---|
| Year | 1952 |
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| Value | 100 Prutas (100 פרוטות) (0.100 ILP) |
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| Obverse description | Printed in a single colour on a fine guilloche underprint forming the central design field, the note carries the large denomination numeral '100' at centre. The inscription 'State of Israel' in Hebrew and Arabic appears above, with the legal tender clause in Hebrew below. The spare, utilitarian layout is characteristic of the austere emergency fractional issues of the early Israeli pound series. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | מדינת ישראל הצעת מטבע חוקית 100 פרוטה (Translation: State of Israel / Legal tender / 100 Pruta) |
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| Comments |
Israel's 1952 fractional notes exist because the new state simply could not produce coins fast enough to meet demand at the lower denominations. The Pruta coinage program was chronically behind schedule, and these paper stopgaps were printed locally — a rare instance of the Israeli government bypassing its usual foreign printing arrangements for a circulating issue.
The series was always intended as temporary, and most notes were destroyed once coin supplies caught up. That disposability, combined with the small format that made individual notes easy to lose or discard, accounts for the genuine scarcity of high-grade survivors today — not collector hoarding or wartime disruption, just ordinary attrition of a note nobody expected to keep.