50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce de Dieppe 76

Dieppe's Chamber of Commerce issued small-denomination emergency notes during the First World War when bronze and nickel coinage effectively vanished from French circulation — hoarded, melted, or simply absorbed by wartime demand. Local commercial chambers across France were authorized to fill the gap, and hundreds of them did. Dieppe was among the earlier issuers to formalize the arrangement through a Paris printer rather than relying on whatever local press was available.

Imprimerie Richard handled a number of these provincial emergency issues. The watermarked paper was a modest anti-counterfeiting measure in a period when the stakes of forgery were relatively low — these notes circulated hyperlocally and were never intended to travel far.