5 Centavos

Culion's leper colony scrip occupies a genuinely strange corner of monetary history. The Philippine Commonwealth's Bureau of Health maintained a parallel currency system at Culion specifically to prevent colony residents from introducing notes into general circulation — a public health quarantine measure expressed through economics. By 1942, the Japanese occupation had disrupted supply lines to the island, and this late Commonwealth issue was circulating alongside, and in competition with, Japanese Military Administration pesos flooding the archipelago.

Earlier Culion issues date back to 1913. The series ran across several decades with surprisingly consistent administrative intent, even as the political authority overhead changed hands repeatedly.