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10 Centimes Alger Chamber of Commerce
| Issuer | Chambre de Commerce d'Alger |
|---|---|
| Year | 1916-1921 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Milled |
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| Obverse description | At center, a winged caduceus entwined by two serpents, flanked on either side by a palm tree, all within a beaded border. The circular legend around the periphery reads CHAMBRE DE COMMERCE D'ALGER, with the issue year appearing at the base of the design. The composition is rendered in a clean, functional style typical of French colonial emergency coinage. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Algeria's formal colonial coinage was chronically undersupplied during World War I, with metropolitan France unable to provision the territory adequately while fighting on the Western Front. The Algiers Chamber of Commerce stepped in as a quasi-monetary authority, issuing aluminum tokens that circulated by necessity rather than by any formal legal mandate. Several French colonial chambers did the same across North Africa during this period, a patchwork response to a system-wide shortage that nobody in Paris had planned for.
The aluminum composition was not an aesthetic choice — it was the only commercially available metal not subject to wartime requisition at scale.