3½ Gulden - Wilhelmina

This piece was struck in the United States — at the Philadelphia mint — after the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies made domestic production impossible. The Netherlands government-in-exile arranged emergency coinage through American facilities, a stopgap measure that resulted in several denominations being minted stateside for a colonial territory thousands of miles away and entirely under enemy control.

The 3½ gulden denomination itself was peculiar to the East Indies monetary system and saw limited use even before the war; by 1943 it was being struck for a economy that had functionally ceased to exist under Dutch authority.