1 Franc Essai

The 1948 essai issues from the Monnaie de Paris were produced as trial strikes to test proposed designs and alloys following France's postwar monetary reorganization. They were never intended for circulation and were typically distributed to officials, collectors, and institutional archives in very small quantities — making survival rates far higher in choice condition than any circulation issue of comparable date.

KM#E1 designates this as the first catalogued essai for the type, though the Monnaie de Paris produced multiple parallel trials in differing compositions that same year.