50 Centavos

Culion Island in Palawan housed one of the largest leprosaria in the world, and its internal currency existed specifically to prevent colony scrip from circulating on the mainland — a public health measure as much as a monetary one. The colony's notes were valid only within the settlement's perimeter, and patients received wages in this scrip for whatever labor they performed inside.

The 1942 date places this issue under Japanese occupation, when the colony's administrative situation was acutely precarious. Whether this particular printing was authorized under Commonwealth authority in exile or under Japanese-period administration is a question the catalog record alone cannot settle cleanly.