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5 Para Postage stamp money
| Issuer | Ottoman Empire |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
| Type | Emergency banknote |
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| Obverse description | Printed in red on cream cardboard with perforated edges in the manner of a postage stamp, the central oval vignette shows Enver Pasha and Kaiser Wilhelm II standing together at a gun emplacement, with artillery equipment visible in the background. The corners bear crescent-and-star devices, while floral arabesques frame the composition on all sides, with the Ottoman tughra at the bottom centre. The denomination numeral '5' appears in circular cartouches at lower left and right, with Arabic script legend above the central vignette. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is unprinted, displaying only the pale cream cardboard stock with a faint ghosted impression of the obverse design showing through, consistent with the single-sided printing method used for this wartime stamp-money issue. The perforated border is visible on all four sides. |
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| Comments |
Turkey's wartime small-change crisis drove the Ottoman Treasury to issue postage stamp money from 1916 onward — coins had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted as metal became a strategic commodity. These cardboard-backed stamp currency pieces were a stopgap, never intended as a permanent solution, and the public treated them accordingly: heavy handling destroyed them quickly, which is why intact examples are disproportionately scarce relative to their original issue volumes.
The 5 Para denomination was the smallest in the series, worth next to nothing even at face value by 1917 as inflation eroded Ottoman purchasing power in the final years of the war.