These artefacts comprise several metallic value tokens ostensibly issued by the Central Bank of Manchuria for various designated special-purpose funds.

Their fundamental form is circular, featuring a central piercing and a raised border along the outer rim. The inscriptions denote the issuing authority as the “Central Bank of Manchuria” alongside specific budgetary allocations, including “Air Defence”, “South Manchuria Coastal Defence” (rendered anomalously as Nanqian Haifang), “South Manchuria Newly Constructed Railway”, and “North Manchuria Railway Construction”, with the respective monetary values enclosed within parentheses. The reverses are stamped with incised sequential serial numbers. Notably, the specimen designated for “Air Defence” features a four-lobed emblem enclosing concentric rings around the central hole. The origin of this emblem remains obscure, diverging markedly from the known insignia of the Manchuria Aviation Company, the Manchukuo Imperial Army, the Army Air Force, the Manchukuo Police, and the air detachment of the Coastal Police Corps. The inscription reading Nanqian Haifang is presumably an engraver’s error for either Nanman Haifang (South Manchuria Coastal Defence) or Nanxian Haifang (Southern Line Coastal Defence).

In AD 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army orchestrated the Mukden Incident, occupying north-eastern China, and subsequently in AD 1932 installed the abdicated Qing emperor Puyi as “Chief Executive”, later enthroning him as Emperor in AD 1934. Establishing its capital at Hsinking (present-day Changchun), this entity was proclaimed as “Manchukuo”—in reality a Japanese puppet state, conventionally designated in Chinese historiography as the “Puppet State of Manchukuo”. Following its inception, the regime promptly enforced the compulsory redemption of the chaotic paper currencies issued by former warlords through its official central monetary authority, thereby implementing currency unification and comprehensive financial control. In AD 1935, following the formal transfer of ownership of the North Manchuria Railway (formerly the northern section of the Chinese Eastern Railway) by the Soviet Union, the railway’s operation was entrusted to the South Manchuria Railway Company for conversion to standard gauge and modern reconstruction; the immense acquisition costs and engineering expenditure were financed principally through the issuance of special government bonds and syndicated loans. Concurrently, confronting the concentration of Soviet heavy bomber formations in Vladivostok and the broader military threat in the Russian Far East, the authorities conducted large-scale civil air-raid drills, promoted nationwide air defence donation campaigns from the mid-AD 1930s onwards, and channelled capital into the Manchuria Aviation Company as well as fortress fortification programmes. In the coastal reaches of southern Manchuria, strategic efforts focused on harbour expansion and channel dredging at the ports of Yingkou, Dairen, and Huludao.

Modern fiscal frameworks and national treasury disbursement systems instituted rigorous accounting principles and institutional checks and balances, maintaining structural independence among executive administrative orders, treasury cashiering, budgetary accounting, and auditing supervisory bodies. The transfer of specie, cash, and negotiable securities relied entirely upon double-entry bookkeeping and statutory paper instruments. Within the operational purview of treasury vault storage and specie transport, newly minted coinage was uniformly wrapped in paper rolls of fixed quantities (bōkin) or packed into coarse canvas sacks; the bag openings were tightly bound with hemp cord and crimped with tamper-evident lead seals. Furthermore, inscribed wooden tallies or heavy paper cards bearing the inspection officer’s signature and seal were deposited inside the sacks and crates, whilst the exterior joints of the crates were secured with vermilion-stamped paper seals and sealing wax. The flotation and subscription of government bonds were governed by equally stringent legal procedures. When construction bonds were floated or subscribed locally, every instalment paid by an investor (furi-komi) was acknowledged by treasury cashiers through the issuance of formal, revenue-stamped, and officially sealed paper receipts (furikomi uketorisho) or bond exchange certificates (kokusai hikikaeshō). Once fully paid up, these interim vouchers were cancelled against primary registers and exchanged for officially engraved, anti-counterfeiting paper bond certificates; deposited collateral securities and custodial lodgements were likewise catalogued in paper custodial ledgers and itemised monthly statements. Treasury operations, from inception to liquidation, remained strictly within the realm of paper vouchers, registers, and registered receipts.

It has been postulated that these value-bearing tokens might have functioned as “vault package tags” or “ledger bundle tallies” internal to treasury procedures, under the premise that the central perforation facilitated cord binding and lead sealing, the durable metallic composition withstood wear, and the stamped serial numbers on the reverse corresponded directly to treasury registers or designated storage crates for identifying specific bond bundles or fiscal allocations. Nevertheless, treasury cashiering regulations administered under the Government-General of Chosen—which mirrored contemporary Japanese metropolitan procedures—stipulated that packaging tags must invariably consist of low-cost wooden tallies, thick paper cards, or lead seals; no statutory precedent exists for commissioning custom dies to strike elaborate metallic tokens for such routine purposes. Moreover, the stated budgetary rationales on the obverses, such as “coastal defence construction”, are excessively broad; official disbursements in archival administrative records were invariably tied to concrete designations, such as the “Reconstruction of Huludao Harbour”. Furthermore, no mechanical wear or friction abrasions resulting from prolonged cord suspension are discernible along the inner rims of the central perforations.

Another hypothesis suggests that these objects served as subscription tokens or receipts for public donations, such as “interim subscription tallies for instalment-paid government bonds”, wherein irregular denominations such as fifty-five, sixty-five, eighty-five, or ninety yuan might reflect discounted issue prices or instalment payments. However, state bond instruments fundamentally emphasised their mature face value rather than the paid-in sum, and extant paper debentures invariably set out both figures side by side. Furthermore, based on surviving archival specimens and statutory instruments, the subscription of state bonds across both Asian and Western banking institutions was managed almost exclusively via paper counterfoils, audited receipts, and counter-signed registers; the likelihood of the state incurring the substantial expense of striking metallic tokens lacking adequate anti-counterfeiting features to issue to the public as redemption scrip is exceedingly remote. More critically, enclosing a redeemable denomination within typographic parentheses—round brackets—undermines the fiscal authority of the stated value and engenders profound suspicion, as punctuation marks of any sort are virtually non-existent in historical Chinese, Japanese, or Western coin and fiscal token die-engraving traditions.

Although post-war historiography has consistently characterised Manchukuo as an illegitimate colonial puppet regime, it has nonetheless evolved into an exceptionally lucrative collecting niche within the global fields of military history, railway memorabilia, and numismatics, precisely because market valuations have become decoupled from realpolitik and ideological considerations. Because the regime survived for a mere thirteen years (AD 1932–1945) and was subjected to wholesale political liquidation following the Second World War, its surviving material culture possesses both inherent scarcity and a distinct chronological self-containment. It appeals simultaneously to overlapping collector demographics: railway enthusiasts pursuing ephemera related to the South Manchuria Railway and the conversion of the Chinese Eastern Railway, alongside historians and collectors of Second World War militaria. Beyond the enduring domestic Japanese market for wartime and railway relics, Western militaria markets similarly regard the artefacts of the Axis powers and their client states as a major collecting category. This persistent commercial demand confers substantial monetary value upon such relics irrespective of geographical or ideological boundaries, meaning that the possibility of these tokens being modern fantasy fabrications produced to exploit this market cannot be discounted.

這是數面滿洲中央銀行所發行，各專項資金的數額證牌。

基本形制為圓形，中央有圓孔，邊緣有環。列有發行單位「滿洲中央銀行」及資金事由「航空防務」、「南錢海防」、「南滿新建鐵道」、「北滿鐵道建設」等。另以括號內附金額。背面則衝刻流水號。其中，「航空防務」中央圓孔四周附有四葉同心圓徽紋，該徽出處不明，與滿洲航空株式會社、滿州國陸軍、陸軍飛行隊、滿州國警察、海邊警察隊航空分隊等單位徽記均有較大差異。銘「南錢海防」者，可能為「南滿海防」或「南線海防」的誤字。

日本關東軍於公元1931年策劃「九一八事變」佔領中國東北，並於公元1932年擁立清朝遜帝溥儀為「執政」（後於公元1934年改稱皇帝），定都新京（今長春），建「滿洲國」，實為日本的傀儡政權，中文中習稱「偽滿州國」。滿洲國成立後，隨即透過官方中央金融機構強制收兌舊軍閥雜亂紙幣，推行幣制統一與全面性的金融統制。公元1935年，蘇聯將北滿鐵路（原中東鐵路北段）所有權正式轉讓後，該鐵路隨即被委託南滿洲鐵道株式會社進行日本標準軌改建與現代化整建，龐大的收購代金與工務支出主要仰賴政府發行特種公債與跨國銀團借款因應。同時，面對蘇聯在海參崴集結之重型轟炸機部隊與遠東軍事威脅，當局自公元年代中葉起大規模實施防空演習、推行全民防空捐獻，並挹注部分資金於滿洲航空會社及各要塞防護；南滿沿海地區則聚焦於營口港、大連港與葫蘆島之港灣擴建與航道疏濬。

近代金融制度與國庫出納體系引入會計與分權制衡架構，行政命令、金庫出納、主計會計與監察審計各自獨立，現金與有價證券之移轉完全依賴雙式簿記與法定紙質憑證。在實體硬幣之金庫保管與解運環節中，出廠鑄幣一律以固定枚數捲入紙包或裝入粗麻袋，袋口以麻繩緊紮後施加壓合防偽鉛封，袋內與箱內則置入書寫檢驗責任者之木札或厚紙小札，外箱接縫處輔以紙質硃印封條與火漆封印。公債之發行與籌募更具備嚴格法定程序，政府發售建設公債或地方認募時，投資者各期繳納之款項（拂込）均由銀行出納開立具印花與官印之紙質「拂込受取書」或「國債引換証」，繳足全額後於底冊核銷換發防偽雕刻之正式紙質「公債證書」，庫存抵押證券與代庫保管品亦全數登載於紙質保管登記簿與明細月報表中，公庫運作從始至終不脫紙質票表與記名憑單之範疇。

所述數額證牌即可能為金庫內部程序所需之「庫房封包牌」或「帳夾串牌」，主張其穿孔便於繫繩穿鉛，金屬質地耐磨耐損，背面鋼印流水號恰可對應金庫出納底冊或特定庫位箱號，專供盤點識別特定專案公債或款項封包之用。然而，參照朝鮮總督府治下，應承繼自日本的金庫出納法規，明定封裝標籤一律使用低成本之木札、厚紙小札或鉛印，查無特別開模衝壓金屬牌之前例，且牌面資金事由過於籠統，如「海防建設」等，對於資金出納，公文書中應會使用具體如「葫蘆島港改築」等事由。圓孔邊緣處也並未觀察到繫繩所導致的磨損。

另一可能，則為「公債分期認繳換領簽」之類的獻納憑據，其「五十五」、「六十五」、「八十五」、「九十」等非常規面額，可能與公債折價發售或分期認購之實繳金額有關。然而公債應強調其可兌領的金額，而非實繳金額，現存紙質公債即兩者並列。此外，根據現存實物及法條，近代中外銀行之公債認購手續幾乎均以紙質收執單及存查聯進行審計核銷，官方花費巨資鑄造不可防偽之金屬代牌交付民間作為換領憑證的機率極小。更有甚者，作為可兌領的面額，使用括號（丸括弧）夾註數字，只會降低面額的權威性，增添不可信任感。任何標點符號，在中外錢幣或財務憑證上極少出現。

滿洲國在戰後雖然在意識形態上被定性為殖民偽政權，但在全球軍事史、鐵路史與貨幣收藏領域中，卻因收藏價值與現實政治脫鉤而成為熱門的市場板塊。由於其政權存續時間僅短短十三年（公元1932至1945年），加上戰後遭到徹底清算，使得相關歷史實物具備了稀缺性與地域的封閉性，同時，還巧妙疊合了多個收藏族群而受到關注，包括聚焦於南滿洲鐵道與中東鐵路改建史料的鐵道文化愛好者，也涵蓋二戰軍事史的研究藏家。此外，除了日本國內至今仍存在二戰迷與鐵道迷相關的收藏圈外，在歐美軍事文物市場中，二戰軸心國及其附庸政權的文物亦屬於重要收藏分支，從而賦予了此類遺存超越地域與意識形態的市場價值，因此暫無法排除其為臆造的可能。