5 Centimes

Sidi-Bel-Abbès was the garrison town of the French Foreign Legion — its headquarters sat there from 1843 until Algerian independence in 1962. The 1915 municipal emergency notes from this commune, including this 5 centimes piece, were part of a broad wave of small-denomination paper issued across French Algeria when wartime metal requisitioning stripped coins from everyday circulation. The metropole was bleeding copper and bronze into munitions production, and local authorities were left to improvise.

Municipal chambre de commerce and ville issues from this period were typically printed locally in small runs and redeemed within months, which accounts for their relative scarcity today.