10 Centimes

The Mines du Zaccar were iron ore workings in the hills above Miliana, operated well before the First World War but cut off from normal commercial channels once the conflict disrupted French colonial banking supply. Like dozens of French Algerian industrial concerns and municipalities during 1914–1918, the company resorted to printing its own small-denomination paper tokens — monnaie de nécessité — to pay workers and facilitate trade within the local economy when fractional coinage had effectively vanished from circulation.

These mining-company issues from Algeria remain poorly documented compared to their metropolitan French counterparts. Attribution of specific print runs to individual years within the 1916–1918 window is rarely possible from the notes themselves.