1 Euro - Cherbourg

Cherbourg issued this piece in 1997 as part of the wave of French municipal emergency currency struck ahead of the euro changeover — towns and regional chambers of commerce produced local scrip partly as a hedge against feared cash shortages and partly, frankly, as a revenue exercise. The legal basis was threadbare; these were never true legal tender but circulated locally by merchant agreement.

Cherbourg's longstanding identity as a deep-water Atlantic port, and the terminus of transatlantic liner routes through much of the twentieth century, gave the city enough civic pride to produce its own issue rather than pooling with the surrounding Manche département.