10 Centimes

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.