One Beer Maison du Colon

Maison du Colon was a French colonial trading house operating out of Oran, and this 1942 piece is a wartime necessity token — not currency in any formal sense. With metropolitan France under occupation and North Africa cut off from normal coin supplies, businesses across Algeria resorted to issuing their own cardboard bons, redeemable only at the issuing establishment. The beer denomination is literal: one drink, not one unit of account.

These merchant tokens were printed locally and survive in small numbers, most having been redeemed and discarded.