5 Shillings

Grenada's 1920 5 Shillings is one of the earliest government-issued notes for the island, predating the unified Eastern Caribbean currency arrangements by decades. At this point Grenada was a British Crown Colony, and the issue came under colonial treasury authority rather than any central bank — an arrangement common to small island possessions that lacked the transaction volume to justify a full banking infrastructure.

De La Rue's involvement here is entirely expected; the firm handled the vast majority of British colonial small-denomination issues during this period. What makes this note genuinely scarce is the limited original print run combined with heavy use in a tropical climate that was hard on paper currency.