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25 Cents
| Issuer | Government of Ceylon |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1949 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette of King George VI in military uniform within an oval guilloche frame, with denomination "TWENTY FIVE CENTS" in large letters across the lower portion. The heading "THE GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON" runs along the top, flanked by "25c" numerals at each corner, with the legal tender clause divided across the upper left and right fields. Date and dual signatures of the Commissioners of Currency appear in the lower section, with Sinhala and Tamil script inscriptions along the bottom margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THE GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR THE PAYMENT OF AN AMOUNT NOT EXCEEDING FIVE RUPEES TWENTY FIVE CENTS ශත විසිපහ இருபத்தைந்து சதம் (Translation: THE GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR THE PAYMENT OF AN AMOUNT NOT EXCEEDING FIVE RUPEES TWENTY FIVE CENTS Twenty five cents Twenty five cents) |
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| Comments |
Ceylon's wartime small-denomination notes were a direct response to the acute coin shortage caused by the diversion of metals to the war effort — the same crisis that produced similar fractional paper currency across British-administered territories from Malaya to India. The Government of Ceylon, rather than the Ceylon Currency Board, issued these specifically because the amounts involved were sub-monetary in the banking sense: emergency scrip filling a gap, not formal fiduciary currency.
The series ran well past the war's end, remaining in issue into 1949 as coin production normalized only slowly. Wartime humidity in storage caused significant paper degradation in many holdings, and clean survivors from the early 1942 dates are proportionally harder to find than the later printings.