Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
100 Francs ovpt. on 50 Piastres
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1943 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Printed in green, the reverse carries a central vignette reproducing a processional frieze of Apsara dancers derived from the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, rendered in fine intaglio engraving across the full width of the note. Chinese characters reading 東方匯理銀行 (Banque de l'Indochine) appear at left, with Khmer script at lower right. The border consists of a repeated guilloche pattern with ornamental corner medallions. |
| Reverse lettering | ĐỒNG VÀNG 東方匯理銀行 |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Free French administration in exile needed currency for territories it hoped to reclaim or hold, but wartime logistics made fresh designs impractical. This note was a stopgap: existing Banque de l'Indochine 50 Piastres stock, printed by ABNC before the fall of French Indochina, overprinted with a new denomination in francs to serve a different monetary geography entirely — the French Pacific and Indian Ocean possessions rather than Southeast Asia.
The franc overprint on a piastres base is not a clerical curiosity. It reflects exactly how fractured Free French currency arrangements had become by 1943, with denomination, territory, and issuing authority no longer mapping cleanly onto one another.