In 1918, very soon after our declaration of independence, a civil war erupted between the Finnish Red Guard (communists) and the Whites (government). The official name of the red "government" was "The People's Commissariat" and the red armed forces were called "The Red Guard", At the beginning, the Red Guard were victorious and among other things, they invaded our capital Helsinki and the mint and banknote print fell into their hands.
The Reds printed lots of paper money using original plates and paper. The only difference between official and Red bills was the serial number, which caused quite a commotion after the Reds were driven out of Helsinki.
The Reds also found brand new punches made for new type 5 pennia" coin and redesigned the emblem side (instead of Finnish Lion they used (Red) flags and a trumpet inside of a wreath and the text "KANSAN TYÖ, KANSAN VALTA SUOMI 1918 FINLAND". ("PEOPLE'S WORK, PEOPLE'S POWER 1918")). This coin is also our first coin having also other language than Finnish (the word FINLAND).
The Reds manufactured about 34 000 pieces of this coin and after the civil war, it became a very popular memento of the war. Because of the popularity of the coin, an unknown source produced more of those coins for the market (not original ones, these copies were made somewhere in Germany) in early 20's. The original type (type I) can easily be distinguished from the copy (type II) because there is a differences in the emblem side.
The odd thing with this coin is the current value: A nice VF type I Red 5 pennia" 1918 costs about 100 FIM, but the type II which is a copy costs over 600 FIM!
Since the Reds invaded our capital, Helsinki, the town of Vaasa became our new capital. And as I wrote, the mint and banknote print was in Red's regime. The lack of cash was a growing problem and our "exile" government authorized the Vaasa Bank (Vaasan Osake Pankki) to issue contocourant-cheques which were actual banknotes. 25, 100 and 500 markkaa bills were made, all dated 1918. The artist who rapidly designed those bills was one of our most famous artists Akseli Gallen-Kallela. After the Reds defeat Vaasa sadly lost it's capital status but as reminder of those days we have in our city arms added a Cross of Freedom.
During the occupation of Helsinki the Reds printed 1, 5, 20, 100 and 500 markkaa bills in large numbers and after liberation the official government noticed that a lot of unofficial bills had been made by the Reds. The government knew the last official serial number of each type of the bills and also discovered the last number used by the Reds so the government declared all Red-made 5, 20, 100 and 500 markkaa bills illegal and worthless, you can imagine the commotion.
People tried to get rid of these bad bills and the most popular way of doing this was to alter the serial number, usually by scratching the first number off (in those days there was no zeroes on the beginning of the serial).
Today those Red "counterfeits" are very common and provide a nice way of getting these types in one's collection. The 500 markkaa bill can be bought for only 200-300 FIM in very nice condition, if it is with a bad serial number while the legal ones cost ten times more. Only the Red 1 markka note (which was not declared illegal) is more valuable than the official one. All other Red bills are significantly less valuable than the original ones.
The Vaasa Bank bills are very much in demand. A crisp 25 markkaa bill costs several hundred FIMs, the 100 bill is more expensive and the 500 markkaa VOP bill, in good condition, costs far over 10,000 FIM.