Banknote Billet France 25 centimes 1917

The 25 Centimes Note of the Caisse Communale de Change of the City of Bolbec, issued in 1917, is a local emergency banknote produced during the First World War. This period of conflict led to a widespread shortage of metallic currency in France, prompting many municipalities and chambers of commerce to issue their own fiduciary monetary instruments to compensate for the lack of currency in circulation.

Bolbec, a municipality in Seine-Maritime located in Normandy, was among the many local authorities that established a municipal exchange office to ensure the continuity of economic exchanges at the local level. These emergency banknote issues were only valid within a limited geographical area, generally corresponding to the issuing municipality and its immediate surroundings.

This note has a face value of 25 centimes, making it a low-denomination note intended to facilitate everyday transactions.

From a historical and numismatic perspective, these municipal emergency notes constitute valuable testimonies of local economic organisation in times of crisis. They reflect the administrative ingenuity of French municipalities in the face of the economic disruptions caused by the war. The explicit mention of the Caisse Communale de Change on this note attests to the institutional framework established by the city of Bolbec to oversee and legitimise this temporary monetary issue.

These local issues from the First World War are today sought after by collectors specialising in French emergency currency, constituting an important part of Norman regional numismatics and the economic history of the 1914-1918 period.