1 Franc - Chambre de Commerce d'Abbeville 80

Abbeville's Chamber of Commerce began issuing emergency fractional notes during the First World War, when the disappearance of coinage from circulation forced hundreds of French municipalities and commercial bodies to produce their own. The 1 Franc piece in this series appeared in 1920, well into the postwar period — by which point the Banque de France had largely restored normal currency supply, making these late chamber issues transitional objects, issued more out of administrative inertia than genuine necessity.

Imprimerie Chaix, the Paris printer responsible for this note, was also one of France's leading producers of railway timetables and theatrical posters — a commercial printer of considerable technical standing, not a specialist security firm.