See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

1 Franc Commune de Blandain

Issuer Commune de Blandain
Year 1914
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Lithographie & Cartonnage de Tournai, Société Anonyme
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description The reverse is entirely unprinted, bearing only a circular purple administrative hand-stamp applied at centre. The stamp reads 'ADMINISTRATION COMMUNALE DE BLANDAIN - HAINAUT' around its perimeter, enclosing a central heraldic device.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Official stamp
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

Blandain is a small village just west of Tournai, and this note belongs to the chaotic wave of emergency municipal scrip that flooded Belgium in the weeks following the German invasion of August 1914. With the national banking system in immediate paralysis and coin hoarded almost overnight, hundreds of Belgian communes — including ones with populations in the low thousands — improvised their own fractional currency to keep local commerce moving.

The Lithographie & Cartonnage de Tournai was a local commercial printer, not a security press. The official stamp was the primary — and thin — defense against counterfeiting.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE