1 Belga / 5 Francs - Albert I French text

The belga was a trade unit introduced in 1926 specifically to stabilize Belgium's battered post-war currency, fixed at five francs and intended primarily for international transactions. Its creation followed the franc's collapse to roughly one-seventh of its pre-war value — a depreciation that made everyday arithmetic absurd and forced a wholesale rethinking of the monetary unit. The belga itself was never legal tender in any formal retail sense; it existed as an accounting convenience given physical form.

KM#97.1 and 97.2 differ by the position of the signature on the die — a variation tied to changes in the engraver credit rather than any policy decision.