5 Cents Kagnew Station; Oasis Club

Kagnew Station, near Asmara, was a U.S. Army signals intelligence installation — one of the most strategically sensitive in Africa during the Cold War. The Oasis Club scrip circulated exclusively on base, a closed monetary system designed to keep dollars out of the local Ethiopian economy and to manage on-post spending through the club system. These small-denomination notes saw decades of hard daily use in a canteen environment, which means genuinely worn examples are the rule, not the exception.

The station closed in 1977 following the Derg regime's deteriorating relationship with Washington after the Ethiopian revolution.