50 Centimes - Saint Menehould 51

Sainte-Menehould is a small town in the Marne department best known, historically, as the place where Louis XVI was recognized during the Flight to Varennes in June 1791 — recognized by a postmaster who had memorized the king's face from his portrait on an assignat. The commercial union token issued here belongs to a different crisis entirely: the acute small-change shortage that gripped provincial France during and immediately after the First World War, when hoarding stripped circulation of all hard currency below the franc level.

Nickel-plated zinc was a wartime compromise material, adopted when nickel alone became a strategic reserve.