10 Centimes Erpion

Erpion is a small village in the Thuin district of Hainaut, and like dozens of Belgian communes during the First World War, it issued its own emergency paper fractional currency when coinage disappeared almost entirely from circulation after 1914. The German occupation drained metal currency through requisition and hoarding simultaneously, forcing local authorities — mayors, communes, charitable committees — to print whatever they could to keep small transactions moving.

Tickets Meurice in Brussels produced a remarkable number of these communal issues during the occupation, effectively becoming a clearinghouse printer for municipal scrip. The official stamp was the primary anti-counterfeiting measure — thin protection, but sufficient for a village-level instrument nobody outside the commune had reason to forge.