5 Centimes Stavelot

Stavelot is a small Ardennes town, and in 1915 it was under German occupation. With official Belgian coinage hoarded or requisitioned and no meaningful supply of small change reaching civilian markets, dozens of Belgian communes issued their own emergency scrip. This note is one of those hyper-local solutions — printed by the town's own press, Jos. Lamberty, signed by hand, and stamped with whatever official seal the local administration could still legitimately use.

The Lamberty firm was a local print shop, not a security printer. The handwritten signature and rubber stamp were the only barriers against counterfeiting — thin ones, but the denominations were too small to make forgery worth the effort.