50 Francs CFA non magnetic, Essai

Essai strikes of this type were produced for the 1972 BCEAO coinage reform, when the West African Economic and Monetary Union was consolidating currency production under a unified central bank framework. Pattern and essai pieces from this period were typically distributed to member-state treasuries, international banks, and coin cabinets rather than entering circulation — which explains why survivors appear almost exclusively in original packaging.

The non-magnetic copper-nickel specification distinguishes this from later alloy trials catalogued under the same KM group, accounting for the separate E6 suffix variants.