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5 Centimes
| Issuer | Compagnie de Mokta-El-Hadid, Direction de Bénisaf |
|---|---|
| Year | 1916 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Franc (1848-1959) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Blue-ground note with white letterpress text arranged in three registers within a simple rectangular border decorated with a scrollwork frame. The issuer's abbreviated name appears at the top, followed by the bon pour legend and the large denomination numeral '0F.05' in the centre, with 'centimes' below. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | COMPAGNIE de MOKTA EL HADID 5 DEC 1916 DIRECTION de BENISAF (Translation: Mokta-El-Hadid Company. December 5, 1916. Management of Benisaf.) |
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| Comments |
Mokta-El-Hadid was one of the largest iron ore mining operations in colonial Algeria, and Bénisaf — its port and extraction site on the Oran coast — functioned as a largely self-contained industrial town. During the First World War, the acute shortage of small change throughout French Algeria drove numerous private employers to issue their own low-denomination emergency scrip. This note is one of those — a purely local instrument, redeemable only within the company's own commercial ecosystem and worthless the moment a worker left the site.
The Compagnie de Mokta-El-Hadid had French metropolitan backing, but day-to-day life at Bénisaf ran on whatever the company chose to circulate.