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50 Centimes emergency postage WWI
| Issuer | Trésorerie de la Nouvelle-Calédonie |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920-1923 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 52 × 39 mm |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 50c. POSTES RF NOUVELLE CALEDONIE ET DEPENDANCES (Translation: 50c. Postage RF (French Republic) New Caledonia and Dependences) |
| Reverse description | Plain cardboard reverse bearing two official hand-applied ink stamps in violet: one circular stamp of the Treasurer-Paymaster of New Caledonia to the left, and a second circular stamp of the General Secretariat to the right, serving as the authenticating authority for this emergency currency issue. |
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| Comments |
New Caledonia's postage stamp emergency currency was a direct product of the chronic coin shortage that plagued French Pacific territories during and after World War I. The practice of affixing adhesive stamps to cardboard backing and circulating them as fractional currency was improvised necessity — not policy elegance — and New Caledonia adopted it later than metropolitan France, extending well into the early 1920s when the coin supply still hadn't normalized.
Vollet designed the underlying stamp artwork, but the monetary conversion was handled locally by the Trésorerie. The official backstamp applied to each piece was intended to prevent double-use of spent stamps, though the system was notoriously easy to abuse.
Survival rate is poor — the adhesive dried, the cardboard warped, and most simply disintegrated in the humid Pacific climate.