10 Roubles Alaska

The Russian-American Company's fur-trade scrip occupies a genuinely strange corner of monetary history. Issued by a private chartered company rather than any government treasury, these notes functioned as a captive currency within Russian America — workers and indigenous traders had little practical choice but to accept them, since there was no competing medium of exchange in remote coastal settlements. The walrus-skin substrate was not an affectation; paper simply could not survive the humidity and handling conditions of Pacific Northwest outposts.

Production was entirely local and artisanal, which accounts for the considerable variation between surviving specimens. No professional printing house was involved.