10 Centimes

Douéra is a small commune roughly 20 kilometres southwest of Algiers. Like dozens of Algerian municipalities during the First World War, it issued its own emergency fractional notes to address the near-total disappearance of small coins from circulation — a shortage driven by hoarding and the disruption of metropolitan French monetary supply to the colonies. These hyper-local issues were technically unauthorized but tolerated by the authorities out of practical necessity.

The official stamp is the only authentication mechanism, which tells you everything about how improvised this series was. Paper, a rubber stamp, and municipal authority — nothing more.