20 Francs - Marshal of France Philippe Pétain Essai de Vézien

This is a pattern piece — an essai — submitted by the sculptor Alexandre Vézeien as a proposal for France's wartime coinage under the Vichy regime. It was never adopted for circulation. The Vichy government ultimately issued the 20 Francs in aluminum-bronze rather than copper-nickel, and Pétain's coinage program itself replaced the Republican "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" with "Travail, Famille, Patrie" — the ideological rebranding made visible in pocket change.

Essais of this type were struck in very limited numbers, primarily for archival and approval purposes.