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10 Cents
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indo-Chine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920-1923 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANQUE DE L'INDO-CHINE 10 CENTS PAYABLES AU PORTEUR EN INDO-CHINE EN ESPÈCES G. FRAIPONT. |
| Reverse description | The reverse is enclosed within a richly engraved guilloche border composed of interlocking floral and geometric motifs, with the denomination numeral '10' in each lower corner. The central panel carries the decree text in French, with a red Chinese and Vietnamese denomination overprint applied diagonally across the text field. The designer's name and printer's imprint appear at the lower left and right respectively. |
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| Comments |
Banque de l'Indo-Chine issued fractional centimes notes like this one to address a chronic small-change shortage across French Indochina — a problem that had plagued the colony for decades and worsened sharply after World War One disrupted metal supplies. The 10 centimes denomination was essentially emergency fiduciary paper filling the gap left by absent bronze coinage.
Imprimerie Chaix was primarily a commercial and poster printer, best known for its Belle Époque railway and travel lithography. Gustave Fraipont worked extensively in that same advertising tradition, which makes this a genuinely unusual pairing of commercial illustrators with colonial currency production rather than a specialist security printing house.