50 Kopecks, Russian Empire, 1915

A treasury small-change note, issued from 1915 because silver coin had disappeared from circulation almost as soon as the war began. Its text is the whole story: these circulate on a par with silver subsidiary coin — an admission that they are a substitute for metal nobody could get.

Printed on thin card, unsigned, unnumbered, in enormous quantities. They are the first step of the imperial monetary collapse: not inflation yet, just the quiet disappearance of anything with intrinsic value.