1 Rupee

The wartime 1 Rupee notes issued by the Government of Mauritius in 1942 were a direct response to the disruption of normal currency supply chains caused by the Second World War. With the Indian Ocean increasingly hazardous and British colonial printing resources strained, smaller-denomination government currency notes were pressed into service where coinage would normally have circulated.

Pick 26A is distinguished from the closely related 26B by its serial number prefix configuration — a detail that catches out collectors who assume the two are interchangeable. Mauritius government rupee notes of this period are notoriously prone to tropical paper deterioration, and genuinely clean survivors are far less common than the issue volume might suggest.