25 Roubles Baku

The Baku City Council issued this note in 1918 during one of the most chaotic administrative successions in the Caucasus — Baku changed hands between the Baku Commune, British forces under Dunsterville, and the Army of Islam within a single year. Municipal scrip of this kind filled the vacuum left by the collapse of reliable Tsarist and Provisional Government currency, and local city councils across the former empire improvised their own instruments out of practical necessity, not monetary ambition.

Baku issues from this period are notoriously prone to condition problems due to low paper quality and heavy local use. The S725 series is among the more frequently encountered of the Transcaucasian municipal emissions, but sound examples are less common than their apparent frequency suggests.