5 Talonas 'Coupon'

Lithuania reintroduced the talonas in May 1991 as a supplementary coupon currency, required alongside Soviet rubles for purchasing rationed goods. The system was designed specifically to prevent ruble-flush buyers from neighboring republics from draining Lithuanian consumer markets during the supply chaos of the late Soviet period. By October 1992 the talonas had become the sole legal tender, before the litas was restored in June 1993.

Spindulys, a Kaunas printing house with roots in interwar Lithuanian publishing, produced the entire talonas series domestically — a deliberate assertion of administrative independence predating formal Soviet recognition of Lithuanian sovereignty.