5 Francs Bouisseville

During the German occupation of France, a number of agricultural estates and rural communities issued their own emergency scrip to manage local wages and transactions — this 5 Francs note from Villa No. 1, Bouisseville is one such example. The issuer was almost certainly a private agricultural domain rather than a municipal authority, a common arrangement in rural southern France when coin shortages and supply disruptions made small-denomination exchange difficult.

The yellow paper stock is a deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure frequently employed by private issuers of this type, who lacked access to security printing but could at least distinguish their scrip by substrate.