1 Cent Pattern

The French Indochina cent patterns of 1931 were produced at Paris as the administration explored a lighter, more economical alloy for colonial coinage — aluminium bronze being cheaper to source and strike than the cupro-nickel compositions then in use. Most were never approved for circulation, leaving surviving examples almost exclusively in collector hands rather than worn into obscurity by decades of Indochinese trade.

The Lec-Indo#103 reference places this among a small cluster of related essais from the same period, several of which differ only in alloy or edge treatment.