Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
10 Centimes
| Issuer | Compagnie de Mokta-El-Hadid, Direction de Bénisaf |
|---|---|
| Year | 1916 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Paper |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Cie. de Mokta-el-Hadid Bon pour 0F.10 centimes (Translation: Mokta-El-Hadid Company. Good for 0F.10 centimes.) |
| Reverse description | Plain cream paper bearing a single oval validation handstamp struck in black ink. The outer border of the oval carries the issuer's corporate name, the lower arc bears the issuing directorate, and the date '31 OCT 1916' is applied across the centre. The note is otherwise unprinted, consistent with the austere emergency-issue practice of the period. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Mokta-el-Hadid was one of the largest iron ore mining operations in colonial Algeria, with the Bénisaf site on the Mediterranean coast shipping ore directly to French and British steelworks. During the First World War, the chronic shortage of small-denomination coinage across French North Africa forced numerous private enterprises — mines, railways, cooperatives — to issue their own emergency scrip. This note is one such issue, denominated too small for the colonial banking system to bother replacing.
Company-issued scrip from Algerian mining concessions of this period survives poorly; most was redeemed or simply worn to destruction within the site's captive economy.