Museum to host free lecture about military payment certificates – Sept. 29
September 25, 2017
As the Second World War wound to an end, a lot of American GIs were spreading around a lot of dollars in newly liberated and occupied parts of the world.
The hard currency was welcome to locals, but it had a destabilizing influence on those countries’ economies, having such ill effects as inflating the local currencies.
So the U.S. government came up with military payment certificates, or MPCs, for troops to spend on leave. The certificates were paper money in small denominations – 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar, 5 dollars, 10 dollars. Later, during the Vietnam War, 20-dollar MPCs were issued. Thirteen series of MPCs were issued between 1946 and 1973, but no more were issued after American troops left Vietnam.
The concept was revived in a modified form in the late ’90s and called Eagle Cash.
On Friday, Sept. 29, there will be a lecture about MPCs at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum. The speaker will be Will Gragg, a historian of MPCs who has been collecting them for many years.
Gragg is a board member of the S.C. Numismatic Association, and a member of the Midlands Coin Club. He collects a wide range of currency and coins, but has focused a lot of his interest on MPCs. He has collected a wide variety, particularly the Vietnam series – Series 641, 661, 681 and 692. Those MPCs feature a wide variety of different designs and colors, and can be appreciated by collectors as works of art.
The presentation, part of the museum’s Lunch and Learn series, begins at noon, is open to the public and is free of charge.
About the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
Founded in 1896, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is an accredited museum focusing on South Carolina’s distinguished martial tradition through the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the War on Terror, and other American conflicts. It serves as the state’s military history museum by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting South Carolina’s military heritage from the colonial era to the present, and by providing superior educational experiences and programming. It is located at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, sharing the Columbia Mills building with the State Museum. For more information, go to https://crr.sc.gov/.
