5 Centimes Bougie Chamber of Commerce, Straight '5' and Small 'C'

Bougie — now Béjaïa, Algeria — issued emergency aluminum tokens in 1915 because the wartime drain on French metropolitan coinage left colonial towns functionally without small change. The Chambre de Commerce, like dozens of similar bodies across French North Africa and metropolitan France during the First World War, stepped into the vacuum with locally authorized necessity pieces. The straight '5' and small 'c' combination identifies a specific die pairing within this type, and Lecompte catalogues at least two distinct varieties — making the distinction between them a matter of punches rather than policy.