100 Yuan Central Bank of China

By 1944, the Central Bank of China's wartime note production was operating under severe constraints — Japanese occupation had disrupted supply chains, and multiple printing facilities across Free China were running simultaneously with inconsistent quality control. P#261 belongs to a period when the bank was issuing enormous volumes of currency to finance Nationalist military expenditure, a policy that was already accelerating the inflationary spiral that would eventually make these notes nearly worthless within two years of issue.

The self-printed designation here is significant. By this point the bank had lost reliable access to foreign security printers like American Bank Note Company, which had produced earlier, higher-quality series.