15 Centimes

Emergency fractional paper issued by a municipal trade association during the First World War, when the chronic small-change shortage across French Algeria forced dozens of local commercial unions to print their own low-denomination scrip. The Union Commerciale de Ténès was one of several such bodies in the Alger department to do so, filling a gap that the Banque de l'Algérie — and Paris — were in no position to address quickly.

Ténès itself is a small coastal town west of Alger, and notes from this issuer are rarely encountered outside specialist collections of French colonial necessity issues.