10 Centimes

Issued by a coalition of local merchants in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, this aluminium token is a product of the severe small-change shortage that gripped France during the First World War. The Banque de France, unable to keep fractional coinage in circulation — hoarding and metal requisitions saw to that — effectively ceded the problem to municipalities, chambers of commerce, and merchant syndicates, who flooded the country with privately issued nécessité tokens from 1914 onward. By 1918, hundreds of such issuers were operating simultaneously across France.

The Syndicats Commerciaux issues from Saint-Germain-en-Laye are among the more locally specific of these tokens, redeemable only within the participating merchant network.