50 Nouveaux Francs

The Institut d'Émission des Départements d'Outre-Mer was created in 1959 to handle currency for France's overseas departments — Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and Guiana — following the constitutional transition that converted those territories from colonies into full departments. This note, printed by the Banque de France, circulated across four geographically dispersed territories sharing a single currency authority, an administratively unusual arrangement that persisted for decades before each territory eventually came under the euro.

The "Nouveaux Francs" designation dates this issue precisely: the redenomination took effect January 1960, and the NF labeling was officially dropped in France itself by 1963 — yet overseas issues continued using it into the mid-1960s.