5 Francs IEOM

The IEOM was established in 1966 to replace the Institut d'Émission des Départements d'Outre-Mer in the Pacific territories — a bureaucratic separation reflecting France's distinction between its DOM and TOM classifications. These small-denomination coins circulated across French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna, territories whose geographic isolation made coin replacement cycles far longer than in metropolitan France, which is why even circulated examples from this series often retain surprising detail.