100 Talonas 'Coupon'

The talonas was never intended as a permanent currency. Introduced in 1991 as a transitional rationing coupon to suppress Soviet-era ruble speculation and control access to goods, it evolved — awkwardly — into a functioning parallel currency before Lithuania restored the litas in 1993. This 100-talonas note sits in that uncomfortable middle period, when the instrument had outgrown its original purpose but the litas wasn't ready.

Printed by Spindulys in Kaunas, the state printing works, on a tight domestic production schedule with limited security infrastructure. The watermark is the note's primary anti-counterfeiting measure — a modest provision for what had become, by 1992, a serious transactional currency rather than a mere supplement.