5 Centimes

Mascara's municipal emergency notes of 1915 belong to a wave of small-denomination paper issued across French Algeria when the wartime coin shortage became acute — metropolitan France had requisitioned bronze and nickel for munitions, and small change simply disappeared from circulation. The Ville de Mascara, like dozens of other Algerian communes, printed its own stopgap.

Imp. Muselit was a local press, not a security printer, which is why hand signatures were the only authentication measure available. That informality is precisely what makes these survivals interesting — they were never meant to last.