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5 Cents
| Issuer | Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Printed entirely in green on paper with a light-blue guilloche underprint repeating the legend GOUVERNEMENT GÉNÉRAL DE L'INDOCHINE across the field. The centre is occupied by a large elaborate guilloche vignette in the form of a stylised floral or lotus-shaped medallion enclosing the numeral 5 above the word CENTS within a circular guilloche rosette. The issuer's title curves along the top in an arc, two facsimile signatures appear flanking the serial number at centre-bottom, with the titles LE TRÉSORIER GÉNÉRAL at lower left and LE DIRECTEUR DES FINANCES at lower right. The designer's name PHAM NGOC KHUE and the printer's imprint I.D.E.O.-HANOI appear in the lower corners. |
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| Reverse description | Printed in dark green on a light-blue guilloche underprint repeating the issuer's legend, the reverse is dominated by an ornate cartouche at centre containing the anti-counterfeiting warning text in French. Flanking the cartouche at left and right are two circular guilloche medallions each bearing the numeral 5. The denomination is rendered in four scripts around the border: Vietnamese (NĂM XU) at upper left, Khmer script at upper right, Lao script at lower left, and Chinese characters 伍仙 at lower right, reflecting the multilingual character of the French Indochina territories. |
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| Comments |
Issued under Vichy-aligned colonial administration after Japanese forces had effectively severed Indochina from metropolitan France, this tiny-denomination note was a direct response to the near-total disappearance of coin from circulation — hoarding and metal requisitions had stripped the colony of its small change. The Imprimerie d'Extrême-Orient in Hanoi stepped in where the Paris-based security printers no longer could, producing an emergency fractional currency under conditions of occupation without formally acknowledging the occupation.
Phạm Ngọc Khuê's involvement makes this one of the rare colonial-era Indochinese notes with a locally credited Vietnamese designer — an unusual circumstance worth noting in any serious collection.