Care Coupon 1951, July

CARE packages became one of the most recognized humanitarian instruments of the postwar years, and these coupons were the financial mechanism behind them. An American donor would purchase a coupon, mail it to a recipient in Europe, and that person could redeem it locally through CARE's distribution network for a pre-packed parcel of food or goods — bypassing both currency exchange complications and the chronic import restrictions still throttling European economies in the early 1950s.

Not a banknote in any legal sense, but collected seriously as scrip. The 1951 dating places this squarely in the Korean War period, when CARE was simultaneously shifting operations toward Asia.