50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce d'Abbeville 80

Abbeville's Chamber of Commerce began issuing emergency fractional notes during the First World War, when metal coinage vanished almost entirely from French circulation — hoarded, melted, or consumed by the war economy. This 1920 piece belongs to the postwar continuation of that necessity; the coin shortage outlasted the armistice by several years, and local chambers across France kept their emergency paper running well into the early 1920s.

Imprimerie Chaix was a serious Paris house, long associated with quality commercial and official printing. Léon Leclerc handled design for a number of northern French chamber issues in this period.