5 Centimes

Saint-André-de-l'Eure is a small Norman market town, and its chamber of commerce token issue from 1921 belongs to the broader wave of French nécessité coinage that flooded local circulation after World War I stripped the country's small-change supply. The Banque de France's wartime withdrawal of bronze and copper left towns and commercial associations across France issuing their own aluminium and cardboard substitutes well into the early 1920s. Aluminium was the practical choice: cheap, lightweight, and outside the metals commandeered for the war effort.