10 Centimes - City of Albi [Tarn]

Albi's municipal token issue of 1920 belongs to the enormous wave of French emergency coinage — monnaies de nécessité — that flooded local circulation after the First World War stripped the national mint of metal and manpower. Hundreds of French communes, chambers of commerce, and private entities struck their own small-denomination pieces between roughly 1914 and 1927 to fill the void left by hoarded bronze and the collapse of small-change supply. Nickel-plated iron was a compromise material: cheaper than the prewar cupro-nickel it mimicked, but prone to corrosion where the plating wears or chips, which makes genuinely intact survivors harder to find than mintage figures alone would suggest.