10 Centimes - Union commerciale de Nouvion-en-Thiérache

Nouvion-en-Thiérache, a small market town in the Aisne department, sat squarely in the zone of German occupation during World War I and emerged from it with its commercial infrastructure badly disrupted. The Union Commerciale et Industrielle issued these aluminium tokens in 1921 as emergency substitute currency — the postwar French small-change shortage was acute enough that local merchant associations across northern France independently filled the gap rather than wait for the Monnaie de Paris to catch up with demand.

Hundreds of similar chamber-of-commerce issues appeared across France between 1919 and 1924, but the Nouvion series is among the more obscure, serving a catchment area of only a few thousand inhabitants.