10 Centimes

The Union Commerciale de Brive issued cardboard emergency tokens like this one during the First World War, when the hoarding of metal coins — driven by wartime anxiety and the suspension of convertibility — created an acute shortage of small change across provincial France. Hundreds of local chambers of commerce and merchant associations stepped in to fill the void, producing their own fiduciary tokens accepted within a defined geographic circuit. Brive-la-Gaillarde, a market town in the Corrèze, was among them.

Cardboard tokens from this period are far more fragile survivors than their aluminum or zinc counterparts.