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50 Cents
| Issuer | Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse, also printed in green, presents a central rectangular cartouche bearing a French legal warning text regarding counterfeiting, flanked on either side by stylised dragon heads and sprays of rice or palm fronds rising from the lower border. The denomination is expressed multilingually in the four corners: 'NĂM HÀO' in Vietnamese (upper left), Khmer script (upper right), and Chinese characters in the lower corners. A geometric guilloche border frames the entire composition. |
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| Variants | P#91a - serial # format XX 123.456 P#91b - serial # format 1XX 123.456 |
| Comments |
By 1942, the Gouvernement Général was operating under Japanese occupation and cut off from metropolitan French printing resources. The Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient in Hanoi — already the colony's primary press for official documents — became the only practical option for emergency fractional currency. Phạm Ngọc Khuê's involvement as designer marks one of the few instances of a locally credited Vietnamese artist on an Indochinese government issue of this period.
The 1942 small-denomination series was partly a response to acute coin shortages after Japanese forces disrupted regional metal supplies and shipping. These notes circulated heavily and surviving examples in decent condition are genuinely uncommon.