Maisto talonai, Gegužė 1992

Lithuania's 1992 food coupons — "maisto talonai" — were a stopgap rationing instrument issued during the acute supply crisis that followed the Soviet collapse. The country had declared independence in March 1990, but the USSR imposed an economic blockade that year, and shortages of basic goods persisted well into the transition period. These coupons were distributed monthly to households to regulate access to staples, running parallel to the provisional talonas currency introduced the same year.

Spindulys AB in Kaunas, a printing house with roots going back to the interwar republic, handled production domestically — a deliberate choice given that Lithuania was simultaneously rebuilding institutions severed for five decades.