20 ECUS - Chanos-Curson

Foyer Familial Chanos-Curson is a small commune in the Drôme, and this piece belongs to the wave of privately issued French local currency tokens — écus locaux — that proliferated in the early 1990s as towns and associations exploited a legal grey area to produce collectible silver issues under the guise of community currency. The movement drew indirect inspiration from the European ECU unit then being debated in Maastricht negotiations, lending these municipal vanity pieces a veneer of monetary relevance they never quite earned.

Most were sold directly to collectors and saw no genuine circulation.