5 Franc - Coursel

Gemeente Coursel is a small municipality in Belgian Limburg, and like hundreds of Belgian communes it issued its own emergency paper money during the German occupation of World War I. The national banking system effectively collapsed for local transactions after 1914, and municipal and communal authorities across Belgium were authorized — or simply compelled by necessity — to print small-denomination scrip to keep commerce moving. These notes were redeemable in theory but backed by little more than local goodwill.

Coursel's issue is among the more obscure of the Limburg communal emissions, and survival rates for small-commune Belgian WWI scrip vary enormously — many were redeemed and pulped, others simply lost.