50 Centimes Chambers of Commerce Coinage, Piedfort Essai

Tunisia's Chambers of Commerce coinage of the mid-1940s filled a critical gap left by wartime metal shortages and the disruption of normal French Protectorate monetary supply chains. Piedfort essais — struck at roughly double the standard planchet thickness — were produced for official evaluation purposes, not circulation, and survive in very small numbers. The Lec#186 reference places this firmly within Lecompte's specialized documentation of French colonial monetary trials, which remains the authoritative catalog for this material.