Sapeque

The sapeque was France's attempt to produce a coin that could displace the cash coins already entrenched in daily commerce across Cochinchina and Tonkin — perforated, low-denomination pieces that local populations had used for generations. The square-holed format was a deliberate concession to that habit. Monnaie de Paris struck these in multiple runs through the 1880s and 1890s, but adoption was never clean; Chinese cash and counterfeit sapeques circulated alongside the official issues throughout the colonial period.

The 1896 date places this piece late in the series, by which point the denomination's role in the broader Indochinese monetary system was already being reconsidered ahead of the piastre-based reforms that would follow in the early twentieth century.