See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

25 Rupiah

Issuer Treasury, Pendopo, Sumatra
Year 1949
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Paper (lined/ruled paper)
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description A locally produced emergency issue printed on ruled lined paper, with a large central numeral '25' rendered in a swirling, ornate vignette of scroll and wave motifs. Inscriptions appear across the upper and lower registers in Bahasa Indonesia, with a serial number visible in the upper-left area. The overall impression reflects wartime expedient production, with letterpress printing applied directly onto pre-ruled stationery paper.
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description The reverse is the plain ruled side of the lined paper substrate, bearing horizontal blue lines consistent with standard stationery. Faint offset impressions from the obverse printing are visible through the paper, and staining is present across the surface, consistent with age and circulation. No distinct design elements or inscriptions were intentionally printed on this side.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

The Pendopo issue is one of the more striking examples of Indonesian revolutionary finance. Pendopo was an oil-producing district in South Sumatra, and local administrations across the archipelago were empowered — or simply forced by circumstance — to produce their own emergency currency during the independence struggle against the Dutch. This note was printed on lined paper, almost certainly ruled writing stock repurposed from whatever was available in 1949.

That material choice is the telling detail. The Dutch naval blockade had severed normal supply chains, and proper banknote paper was simply not obtainable. What survives today is as much a document of wartime improvisation as anything else.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE