25 Roubles Black Sea Railroad

The Black Sea Railroad operated in the Caucasus region and, like dozens of other regional enterprises and municipalities during the chaos of 1918, resorted to issuing its own scrip when Kerensky-era banknotes became scarce and the Bolshevik takeover shattered normal currency supply channels. These emergency transport company notes — known collectively as bony — were technically obligations against future redemption rather than conventional banknotes, a legal fiction that gave issuers plausible cover.

Survival rates for regional Russian Civil War scrip vary wildly; many issues were repudiated outright and bulk quantities were never redeemed, yet others disappeared entirely through destruction. The Black Sea Railroad series sits somewhere in between — not genuinely rare, but not common in collectible condition either, as the paper quality used by provincial issuers in this period was rarely archival grade.