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50 Centimes '35+15' emergency postage WWI
| Issuer | Trésorerie de la Nouvelle-Calédonie |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920-1923 |
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| Designer(s) | Henri Émile Vollet |
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| Obverse description | Two adhesive postal stamps affixed to a cardboard backing, together constituting the face value of 50 centimes. The 35c stamp, printed in black and yellow, bears a central vignette of a Kanak village; the 15c stamp, printed in purple, carries a central vignette of the Kagu bird. Both stamps bear the legends of the French Republic postal series for New Caledonia and Dependencies. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 35c. POSTES RF NOUVELLE CALEDONIE ET DEPENDANCES REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE POSTES NOUVELLE CALEDONIE 15c ET DEPENDANCES (Translation: 35c. Postage RF (French Republic) New Caledonia and Dependencies French Republic Postage New Caledonia 15c and Dependencies) |
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| Comments |
New Caledonia's wartime and postwar coin shortages prompted the Trésorerie to authorize cardboard emergency fractional currency in lieu of small change — a solution used across several French colonial territories when metal was scarce and mint supply unreliable. This particular issue repurposed the design of existing French postage stamps, overprinting or adapting the "35+15" denomination combination that originally appeared on a wartime surtax stamp series, where the extra 15 centimes funded war relief.
Vollet's involvement places the design firmly in French philatelic tradition rather than banking convention. The cardboard substrate degrades readily in tropical humidity, making intact examples genuinely difficult to source.