50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce de Cahors 46

Cahors lies in the Lot département, a region whose prewar economy ran heavily on tobacco, truffles, and the notoriously tannic local wine. When the 1914 mobilization gutted the metal coin supply almost overnight, hundreds of French chambres de commerce scrambled to fill the fractional gap. Cahors was among the first wave, issuing emergency paper in 1915 well before the formal authorization system was properly organized.

Pierre Dumont in Limoges handled a significant share of the wartime emergency notes for the southwest. The watermark is the only security feature — modest protection, but counterfeiting small-denomination necessity notes was rarely worth the effort.