5 Centimes

Blida is one of dozens of Algerian communes that resorted to locally printed emergency fractional notes during the First World War, when the withdrawal of small coins from circulation left municipalities with no practical way to make change. The Chambre de Commerce issues from Algiers and Oran are better known; the smaller commune issues like this one from Blida are considerably harder to locate today, largely because they circulated hard and were never systematically preserved.

S. Léon was a commercial printer in Algiers, not a security printing house. The absence of any serious anti-counterfeiting technology was accepted as an unavoidable compromise at 5 centimes.