Catalog
10 Francs Sint-Jan-Baptist Zelzate
| Issuer | Parish of Sint-Jan-Baptist, Zelzate (Province of East Flanders, Belgium) |
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| Year | |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 110 × 68 mm |
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| Obverse description | Pink geometric underprint covers the entire field, printed by letterpress. The issuer name and denomination are rendered in black in both Dutch and French, with the numeral "10" appearing at left and right. The note's bilingual inscriptions are centrally arranged against the decorative geometric background. |
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| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is unprinted and plain, showing a cream-white paper surface with the obverse design visible as a bleed-through impression in mirror image, including the numeral "10", the issuer name, and the bilingual denomination lines. |
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| Comments |
Parish emergency money of this kind proliferated across Belgium and northern France during the First World War, when official small-denomination coinage vanished from circulation almost immediately after the German occupation began in 1914. Local authorities, churches, and private businesses all issued scrip to fill the gap, with varying degrees of official tolerance from the occupying administration. A parish issuer is not unusual for the region, but Zelzate's position on the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal gave it a particular strategic and economic sensitivity during the occupation years.
No printer attribution has been firmly established for this piece. Parish-issued scrip of this type was typically produced by local printers working with whatever materials remained available — quality and consistency varied considerably within the same series.