Banknote Billet France 1 franc 1916

Remarks:

Délibération: 12-05-1916

Spécimen: 3 perforations

This one-franc note was issued in 1916 by the Chamber of Commerce of Moulins and Lapalisse, in the Allier department. It belongs to the context of the First World War, a period during which the shortage of metallic currency led many French chambers of commerce to issue their own emergency notes to meet local circulation needs.

The example presented here holds a particular status as it is a specimen, meaning a reference copy produced for control, presentation or archiving purposes, and not intended for general circulation. This type of documentary piece holds notable historical and numismatic interest, as specimens are generally issued in very limited quantities.

The note belongs to series S1?9, where the intermediate character remains partially illegible or uncertain, which in itself constitutes a specific identifying feature of this example. This particularity is due to perforations, an incomplete impression or an alteration of the substrate at the level of this character.

As a chamber of commerce note, this fiduciary document reflects the substitute monetary organisation put in place at a regional level during the conflict. The Chamber of Commerce of Moulins and Lapalisse covered a geographical area in central France, and its issues helped to maintain local commercial exchanges in the absence of sufficient metallic currency.

This type of emergency note, particularly in the form of a specimen, constitutes direct testimony to the emergency economic mechanisms deployed in France during the First World War, and represents a fully-fledged collector's item in the field of French notaphily from the early twentieth century.