25 centimes - Bon de cantine - Nevers

Bons de cantine were the internal scrip currency of French prisoner-of-war camps during the First World War, issued to German and Austro-Hungarian internees for purchases at the camp canteen. The Nevers depot was one of dozens of provincial holding facilities repurposed from existing military or civil infrastructure after 1914, and each issued its own scrip independently — there was no standardized national system. That autonomy accounts for the wide variation in printing quality and format across different depots.

Camp scrip was explicitly non-negotiable outside the wire, a deliberate policy to prevent its use in escape attempts or black-market exchange with the local population.