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5 Francs Gray type
| Issuer | Trésor Colonial de la Martinique |
|---|---|
| Year | 1884 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 110 × 77 mm |
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| Obverse description | Black letterpress on gray paper, with a thickened border frame and no provision for a serial number at center. The face carries the colonial authority text and decree date within a plain typographic layout, without ornamental vignettes or guilloche underprint. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Uniface note; the reverse is plain unprinted gray paper with no design, lettering, or security elements, as visible on the surviving example. |
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| Comments |
The Trésor Colonial issues for Martinique occupy an awkward position in French colonial monetary history — they were not bank notes in the conventional sense but instruments of the colonial treasury, used to paper over chronic small-change shortages that plagued the island throughout the nineteenth century. The 1884 date places this squarely in the period before the Caisse Centrale de la France d'Outre-Mer rationalized colonial currency arrangements, when individual island treasuries still operated with considerable independence.
The "Gray type" designation distinguishes this from earlier color variants in the P#4 series — a collector distinction, not an official one.