10 Centimes

Issued by the Dunkirk merchants' association during the severe small-change shortage that gripped France in the years immediately following World War I, this iron token filled a gap the French state simply could not. The Banque de France had suspended convertibility in 1914 and the postwar mint was overwhelmed; local chambers of commerce, syndicates, and trade associations across northern France stepped in with their own emergency issues, hundreds of distinct types circulating simultaneously by 1920.

Iron was an unusual choice — most French emergency tokens of this period ran to aluminum or zinc — likely reflecting whatever material the Dunkirk syndicate could source cheaply from local industry so soon after the armistice.