25 Cents Ragama store

Private trade tokens denominated in coin values were a practical workaround in colonial Ceylon, where small change was chronically scarce in rural and semi-rural commercial settings. The Ceylon Ice & Cold Storage Co. operated cold storage and provisioning facilities serving both local and European trade, and their Ragama branch — a railway junction town north of Colombo — issued these notes almost certainly for use within their own supply chain and employee wage settlements rather than open retail circulation.

The Cambridge reference places this among a narrow band of documented Ceylon commercial paper, most of which survived only in single or very small numbers.