50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce d'Evreux 27

The chambres de commerce emergency issues of 1914–1918 exist because the French government's wartime coin hoarding crisis left small transactions essentially impossible. Évreux, the prefecture of Eure in Normandy, was among dozens of regional chambers authorized to fill the gap with locally-issued fractional notes — a stopgap that ultimately ran for years longer than anyone anticipated.

Berger-Levrault, the Nancy-based printer with deep roots in official French government work, handled much of this regional emergency production. The watermark security feature on such a modest-denomination piece reflects genuine concern about counterfeiting even at the lowest transactional levels.