5 Francs

The Banque de l'Algérie was established in 1851 as a colonial note-issuing institution, modeled loosely on the Banque de France but operating under tighter government oversight given the colonial administration's concerns about monetary stability in a territory still only decades into French occupation. By 1873 the bank was the sole legal issuer in Algeria, a monopoly it would hold until 1949.

Imprimerie Gabasson was a Lyon-based printing house — its involvement here rather than one of the Paris firms is worth noting, as colonial currency work of this period was more commonly routed through the capital. Schleider's engraving credit places this firmly in the intaglio tradition of French provincial commercial printing.

Pick 13 is among the scarcer surviving issues of the series, with few examples documented in institutional collections.