10 Centimes - Montoire Loir-et-Cher

Montoire-sur-le-Loir housed a French camp for captured German and Austro-Hungarian officers during the First World War, and this 10 centimes piece is internal scrip — a necessity-issue circulated only within the camp's canteen economy. French metropolitan coinage had effectively vanished from circulation by late 1914 as hoarding and wartime disruption drained small change from the market, forcing even prisoner camps to improvise their own monetary systems.

The issuing authority, the Dépôt d'Officiers Prisonniers, operated under French military administration. Officer prisoners were segregated from enlisted men under Hague Convention obligations and generally permitted limited purchasing privileges — which is precisely what gave this scrip a reason to exist.