5 Cents Atlanta; PoW Camp Exchange

American PoW camp scrip occupies a strange corner of notaphily. Under the Geneva Convention, captured enemy personnel were entitled to receive pay — and the U.S. Army complied, issuing non-negotiable scrip redeemable only within camp canteen systems to prevent the currency from entering the civilian economy. Atlanta, Nebraska held German prisoners during the latter war years, part of a sprawling network of Midwest agricultural camps where detainees were contracted out as farm labor.

The Cambridge reference Camb#7547 places this among the better-documented camp issues, though survival rates for low-denomination scrip are poor — small values changed hands constantly and wore out fast.