5 Centimes

Issued by the Chambres de Commerce de la Région Provençale during the acute metal shortages of the First World War, this piece belongs to a broad class of French regional emergency coinage that proliferated after the Third Republic's central monetary system buckled under wartime demand. Zinc was the fallback precisely because copper and nickel had been commandeered for military production. These regional chamber issues were technically private obligations, redeemable locally, and their legal standing was always provisional.

The Provençal series was among the more organized regional efforts, coordinating across multiple départements rather than issuing piecemeal by individual town.