10 Cents Pattern, purity counterstamped

Pattern issues from Monnaie de Paris in 1919 were produced to evaluate proposed coinage for French Indochina following the disruptions of World War I, which had severely constrained metal supplies and halted normal colonial mint production. The purity counterstamp — applied to designate silver fineness — reflects an administrative caution about public trust in coinage composition at a moment when wartime substitutions had made alloy skepticism widespread across French territories.

The three Lecompte references (158, 158a, 158b) indicate distinct counterstamp placements or punch variants across the surviving population, not separate design types.