1 Franc

Maisons-Lafitte issued its own franc token in 1920 as a direct response to the acute small-change shortage that plagued France throughout and after the First World War. The Banque de France had suspended redemption of small silver coins well before the armistice, and by 1920 municipalities, chambers of commerce, and even private businesses across the country were filling the gap with locally issued aluminium and cardboard nécessité tokens. Maisons-Lafitte's issue is one of hundreds of such municipal pieces, most struck in very limited quantities for purely local circulation.