Catalog
100 Francs Sint-Jan-Baptist Zelzate
| Issuer | City of Zelzate (Province of East Flanders) |
|---|---|
| Year | |
| Type | Emergency banknote |
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| Obverse description | Fine pink cross-hatched guilloche underprint covers the entire face. Denomination numerals and issuing authority inscription are rendered in black letterpress in Dutch, with the parish name and value expressed in both abbreviated and full written form. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 100 100 SINT-JAN-BAPTIST Zelzate Honderd Frank (Translation: Paroisse Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Zelzate. Cent francs.) |
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| Comments |
Zelzate is a small canal-town on the Belgian-Dutch border, and like hundreds of Belgian municipalities it issued its own emergency scrip during the First World War after German occupation disrupted the normal flow of banknotes and coin. These local notes — bons de caisse or noodgeld — were authorized by municipal councils operating under occupation, not by any banking authority, which is why the issuer is the city itself rather than a financial institution. The Sint-Jan-Baptist designation almost certainly refers to the parish church, a common anchor of civic identity used to lend the scrip a degree of local legitimacy.
Belgian municipal emergency issues of this type were typically printed in very small runs by local printers with limited equipment, and survivorship is uneven — some communes produced notes that are genuinely rare today, others issued quantities large enough that circulated examples remain common.