10 Centimes

Châtellerault's Union Commerciale & Industrielle issued this token during the severe small-change shortage that plagued France in the early 1920s, when wartime metal requisitions and postwar monetary disruption left official copper and bronze coinage chronically scarce. Local chambers of commerce and merchant associations across France filled the gap themselves, producing aluminium and cardboard emergency issues that circulated with quasi-official acceptance. Châtellerault was already an industrial town — its national arms manufactory had run continuously since the 1820s — and the merchant association had both the organizational capacity and the economic incentive to manage its own fiduciary token supply.