50 Cents

French Indochina's silver coinage was struck almost entirely at the Paris Mint, with the 50-centime denomination serving the colonial monetary system that pegged local currency to the Mexican peso before France established the piastre as the unit of account in 1885. The forty-year span of this type reflects how rarely the colonial administration bothered to update circulating coinage — design continuity was a bureaucratic convenience, not a policy statement.

The KM#4a.1 and 4a.2 distinction separates issues by the presence or absence of a mintmaster's privy mark, a detail the Paris Mint applied inconsistently across the run.