1 Franc emergency postage WWI

New Caledonia's small-denomination emergency pieces were produced by affixing postage stamps to cardboard backing — a stopgap measure used across French colonial territories when fractional coin shortages became acute during and after the First World War. The francs and centimes coins that should have filled this role had been hoarded or melted, and metropolitan France had little capacity to supply the colonies with fresh coinage during that period.

Vollet designed the underlying postage stamp imagery, not the monetary instrument itself. The cardboard mount was a local solution. Survivorship is poor — the material degrades easily, and these pieces were never meant to last.