2 Francs Piefort Essai

Piéforts are struck at double the normal planchet thickness, a practice the Monnaie de Paris has used for centuries to produce presentation-quality specimens for officials, diplomats, and archivists. The 1948 essai series followed France's postwar monetary reorganization, as the Fourth Republic attempted to stabilize a currency that had been catastrophically debased under both Vichy and the German occupation. Aluminium was adopted for the circulating coinage partly because France's industrial metals remained in short supply or allocated to reconstruction.

KM#PE2 piéforts in aluminium are genuinely scarce — production numbers for French essai piéforts of this period rarely exceeded a few hundred pieces.