25 Ecus de Montolieu [11]

Montolieu, a village of fewer than 800 residents in the Aude département, reinvented itself during the 1980s as a "village du livre" — a book village — on the model of Hay-on-Wye in Wales. By 1994, it had drawn enough antiquarian booksellers and literary tourism to justify issuing its own local coinage, a piece of regional economic theatre as much as numismatic production. These ecus belong to a broader French enthusiasm for privately issued fantasy ecus that flourished in the early 1990s, ahead of the Maastricht Treaty's monetary consolidation making such gestures feel increasingly anachronistic.

The bracketed number [11] identifies this as the eleventh in a numbered series — collectors who assembled complete runs drove secondary demand well beyond face value.