50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce de Tarbes 65

The Chambres de Commerce emergency notes issued across France from 1914 onward filled a vacuum created almost overnight when small-denomination coinage vanished from circulation — hoarded by civilians and drained by wartime metal demands. Tarbes, a modest administrative centre in the Hautes-Pyrénées, was among dozens of regional chambers authorized to issue their own fractional currency under a framework that traded on institutional trust rather than central bank backing.

L. Cassan Ainé, a Toulouse printing house, handled much of the regional emergency issue work across the southwest. The watermark security was a minimum concession to counterfeiting risk; these notes were never intended to circulate beyond local markets.