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4 Annas WWII Cash Coupon
| Issuer | Government of Bikaner |
|---|---|
| Year | 1940-1945 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 4 Annas (1/4) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | GOV. OF BIKANER 4 ANNAS चार आना (Translation: GOV. OF BIKANER 4 ANNAS FOUR ANNAS (in Devanagari script)) |
| Reverse description | Plain salmon-pink paper with perforated edges, bearing a centrally placed oval ink stamp in dark blue. The stamp reads 'TREASURY' along the upper arc and 'BIKANER' along the lower arc, enclosing an authorising manuscript signature or paraph applied in violet ink. |
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| Comments |
Bikaner State, in what is now Rajasthan, issued a series of small-denomination cash coupons during the Second World War as the wartime strain on metal supplies made coin production difficult or impractical. The 4 Annas coupon belongs to this emergency fractional currency — a category of issue that proliferated across multiple Indian princely states during the same period for precisely the same reason.
Bikaner's wartime coupons are among the more obscure survivals from the princely states series. Paper deterioration is a near-universal problem with these low-value emergency pieces, which circulated hard among rural populations before independence rendered them obsolete.