Catalog
5 Centimes
| Issuer | Ville de Chatou |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| Currency | Franc (1795-1959) |
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| Obverse description | At center, the municipal coat of arms of Chatou, depicting a quartered heraldic shield surmounted by a mural crown and flanked by decorative laurel branches, with a ribbon cartouche inscribed CHATOU at the base. The arms are rendered in raised relief within the central field. The circular legend VILLE DE CHATOU is inscribed along the upper periphery, with SEINE-ET-OISE along the lower periphery, all within the scalloped border of ten lobes. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The denomination numeral 5 appears prominently in large raised figures at the center of the field, accompanied by the abbreviation C= immediately to the right, denoting centimes. The date 1918 is inscribed below the numeral in the lower field. The word COMMERCE occupies the upper legend along the periphery, while INDUSTRIE appears along the lower periphery, separated by pellets, all within the characteristic ten-lobed scalloped border. |
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| Additional information |
Chatou, a commune west of Paris on the Seine, issued its own emergency brass coinage in 1918 as the French government's metal requisitions and wartime disruption strangled the supply of official small change. These local necessity pieces — monnaies de nécessité — were authorized at the municipal level and circulated purely within the issuing town, redeemable in theory but often simply absorbed into local commerce and never returned.
The El Monedero reference places this squarely within the documented French local emergency coinage corpus, though municipal pieces from smaller communes like Chatou survive in far smaller quantities than those from major industrial cities.