1 franc - Chambre de Commerce du Tréport [76]

Le Tréport is a small fishing port at the mouth of the Bresle river in Seine-Inférieure, and its Chamber of Commerce had no business issuing currency under normal circumstances. The 1915 date explains everything: the wartime collapse of small-denomination coinage across France — hoarded, melted, simply gone — forced hundreds of provincial chambers to print emergency fractional notes just to keep local commerce moving. This series was part of that nationwide scramble.

Roy & Valade in Amiens handled printing for several northern chambers during this period. The watermark is the primary security concession on what was otherwise an inexpensive emergency production.