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Every confused period of our recent history, by scarcity of coins, hoarding of golden coins and especially silver coins, requisition of the bronze coins for the machinery of war, it was necessary to face and to find solutions to continue to put on the Economy, where from the creation of the Emergency Coins. These coins were emitted in four times :
The French Revolution :
If we find an important number of "reliable paper money" emitted in the dark years of the French Revolution, it had few issuers of metal coins, the most important being the Brothers Monneron.
The War of 1870:
Appeared in the region the North, the issues fast multiplied through the country (approximately 48 departments). If the first issues of emergency coins, in the form of tickets and paper money, were it further to the disappearance of the small cash, the purpose of the last ones, from 1871, was to help in the economic recovery.
The war of 1914-1918:
The causes are the same, that in the previous period. The monetary crisis rages and the economy suffocates due to the shortage of cash, but unlike the war of 70, besides the emergency money, tickets or coins, we invent new means of payment: cardboard money and Encased postage stamps.
We distinguish two categories of emergency coins during this period:
- The "semi-official" : emitted by Chambers of Commerce, Commercial Unions, Commercial and Industrial Unions, municipalities, etc. … These issues are tolerated by the State by decision of August 16th, 1914. They must be accompanied with a deposit of guarantee at the Bank of France representing the part of legal values. Their currency were relatively wide, a city, a department, being able to go to a whole region, the Provençal region, for example.
- The private issues : among which we find tradesmans (bakers, grocer's shops, cafes, hotels, etc.), manufactors (Renault, Fives Lille, etc. who allowed to pay the expenses of canteen, purchases in their co-operative or truck-store, even the salary of their workers), transport companies (the Streetcars of Paris, Saint-Etienne, Havre, etc.). These issues were made without authorization, without deposit of guarantee, and there even, turned up one's nose at the regalian right of the State to strike coins. Their currencies were much more restricted, naturally.
The War of 1939-1945:
The situation is different from the previous periods, the recourse to the emergency coins is not any more the cause of some hoarding, but because of the decision of the State to close the branches of the Bank of France and the counters of the Treasury threatened in front of the German advance, what leads the lock-out of the counters of the commercial banks. These issues were infrequent and circulated not long over.
Some characteristics of the emergency coins :
- Manufacturers among the most important: Thevenon, Duseaux, Bory…
- Values: besides the traditional values 5, 10, 20, 25, 50 centimes, 1, 2, 5 and 10 francs, we find 30, 40, 60 and 75 centimes, without forgetting the very uncommon 12 ½ centimes outside Saint-Etienne and its region. We also find these currencies drawn up in Bread, Baguette or Flute (ex : Saulnes), either in Meat, Milk …
- Materials : aluminum most, for the others, zinc, iron, brass, copper, etc. …
- Forms : almost that we can imagine, round, square, oblong, oval, triangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal, etc., scalloped, pierced, with cut or round corners, etc. …
- Motifs: there also, they are very varied, often the arms of cities, monograms, French soldier (ex : Mazamet), a barrel, a sailboat (ex : Toulouse), a farmer (ex : Evreux), a landscape, a monument, etc. very varied but rare, most content themselves with a legend.
Other coins emitted outside above-mentioned periods are considered as emergency coins, those are coins, with a purely internal use, numerous industrial, mining or labor co-operatives (reaction of the working class to its condition, propagation of the communist ideals, development of syndicates with for example the society of consumption of Trignac, created in 1890), charities (with for example catholic societies as the "Economic Cookers" of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, either anticlerical, as the "Democratic Cookers") which were born with the economic and industrial boom under Napoleon III and the IIIth Republic.
Sources:
- "Monnaies de Nécessité Françaises 1789-1990" of Roland Elie and Victor Gadoury
- "Monnaie de Nécessité et Jetons-Monnaie 1800-2000" of Roland Elie
- Bulletin of the "Société Archéologique de Touraine" (Archaeological Society of Touraine).
The German Emergency Money from 1914 till 1923 :
As for France, rather quickly after the beginning of the World war I, the coins tends to disappear fast, either by the drastic decrease of issues of new coins, the metal being reserved for the machinery of war, or by the hoarding of the silver coins, the intrinsic value of this coins being higher to their face value, among others causes.
The coins being indispensable at this time, much more than in ours, the municipalities are going to put into circulation money, at first under metallic shape (iron, zinc), then under paper money shape, followed by private companies, savings banks, chambers of commerce, etc. Following the example of France, certain issues were covered by a deposit of equivalent value in the banks of State.
These emergency paper money, due to their multitude, their graphics and colors, their text, etc., are very fast going to interest the collectors and to entail lots of new issues. It seems that the first note appeared in 1914, there were few issues until 1917, more and more from 1918, to finish by an expansion of issues in the years 1920-1922. These last ones, who really have no more economic interest, the inflation beginning to increase considerably, are not more printed than for the collectors. They appear in the form of series ( Serienscheine), either of notes of different values, most of the time, 25, 50 and 75 pfennig, or of notes of the same value. The purpose being that these notes is not paid off, their date of refund was often exceeded or non-existent. It was a source of important incomes for their issuers. Some advertised in newspapers to sell them notes, others put into circulation notes for non-existent districts, notably from Hamburg. A very small part of Serienscheine really circulated.
Reutergeld is a subset of Serienscheine. Reinhold Wurst, of Schwerin had the idea, by associating the most possible of municipalities of Mecklenburg, 70 cities and municipalities joined it, to issue for each a series of emergency paper money (10, 25 and 50 pfennig) in memory of the poet Fritz Reuter. Five local artists were in charge of the graphics, the printing office Bärensprungische Hofdruckerei took care of the printing and the marketing was made by the Reutergesellschaft, leaded by Reinhold Wurst. All these notes had an expired date of refund.
A law of July 17th, 1922 put an end to new issues of series of emergency paper money. A temporary end because with years 1922-23, years of hyperinflation, Reichbank and regional banks were not able to face up to the demand. Reichbahn (German railways), cities, provinces, private banks, companies, issued notes, but it is not any more here about small money, but rather about several hundreds of mark in September, 1922, then hundreds of thousand mark, millions, one billion, we were until issued notes of several hundreds billion mark. At certain moments, the devaluation was so fast, that notes, freshly printed, became useless, we owed to reprint them with a stronger value before putting them in circulation. Hjalmar Schacht put an end to this hyperinflation in November, 1923 by a strong series of economic and monetary reforms, Rentenmark replacing the emergency money.
Below, you will find an estimation of the issues of notes : 1914, 452 issuers for 5.500 notes,
1915-1922, 3.658 issuers for 36.000 notes of less than a mark, and 579 issuers for 5.000 notes of more than a mark,
1922-1923, 800 issuers for 4.000 notes from 10 to 1.000 marks and 5.849 issuers for 70.000 notes more of 1.000 mark. We estimate the number of notes for the German colonies at 3.800. In July, 1922, 500 mark were needed to have 1 dollar, then 4.500 for one in October. In January, 1923 the dollar was worth 10.200 mark, the hyperinflation had begun, to reach its highlight in November, 1923 when the dollar was exchanged against 4.2 trillions of mark and this on the official market, on the black market, the dollar had reached the astronomical amount of 12 trillions of mark !!!
Sources :
- World Notgeld 1914-1947 - Courtney L. Coffing
- Diverse Internet pages
The resort to Encased Postage Stamps results from the same reasons enumerated above, concerning the emergency coins, the lack of small cash in critical time. They were put into circulation in very numerous countries in different periods and under various forms. We can classify Encased Postage Stamps in two categories : stamps stuck on a paper or a cardboard, inserted or not into a translucent envelope (for example, Danish Encased Postage Stamps ), and the metal Encased Postage Stamps, the stamp being inserted into a metal capsule (copper, brass, aluminium, iron), covered with a transparent film, in mica for the greater part. It is these last ones who interest me more particularly. They seem to have appeared for the first time in the United States during the American Civil War in 1861-1865, more exactly on August 12th, 1862, date in which John Gault deposited a patent ( Some examples ). Encased Postage Stamps took their development during the First World war and some next years, they existed in most of the European countries, and under their metal shape, more particularly in France, Germany, Austria and Italy. In France, a patent is deposited on March 29th, 1920 by Edouard Bouchaud-Praceiq, inventor of profession. On April 8th, 1920, he registers trademark "F.Y.P". ("Fallait Y Penser", It Needed to Think about It) of the commercial court of the Seine (Paris). The exploitation license of this patent is immediately given up to the manufacturer Robert Binds'Chedler (Paris) for France and abroad. We count approximately 220 tokens of different brands. The Encased Postage Stamps, although Emergency coins, must be also considered as advertising medium in mind of those who orders it the manufacturing. Both Emergency coins , support of stamp and advertising object and because of their little important edition (except those of the Société Générale and Crédit Lyonnais), it interests numerous collectors and therefore, becomes more and more difficult to find ( To put in perspective with the development of internet and the sites of bids...at least, for the moment...).
Some characteristics of the French Encased Postage Stamps :
- Value : the most usual stamps are 5, 10 and 25 centimes.
- Material : aluminium with swaged advertisement, iron with polychromatic advertisement.
- Diameter: generally, approximately 32 mm.
- Edition : series of 1000, numerous series for Société Générale or Crédit Lyonnais, for the Encased Postage Stamps, at least one serie. No exact figure reached until us...
Sources :
- "Timbres-monnaie" of Doctor Pierre Broustine (1988),
- The Bulletin dedicated to Encased Postage Stamps of the Amicale Philatélique Marcophile Colmarienne, signed by Jean Frick (2002),
- Diverse Internet pages, notably American pages.
From 1902, while gambling machines appeared only by 1890, a law does not authorize any more the distribution of the earnings in cash, does not stay that those who distribute the earnings in kind, as candies or cigarettes, or in tokens "to drink". The token "to drink" could not represent at the most twice or thrice the stake, the stake which did not have to itself exceed 10 centimes, and he had to be used in the establishment where was the gambling machine. These machines were settled in different public places, as pubs or fun fairs. They were definitively forbidden by a decree of August, 1937. Among the main manufacturers, we find Bussoz, certainly the most prolix, Beraud, Caille, Lecuyer-Mejeanne-Osswald, Loubet, Nau, Soukhostavski-Verdier, Valter... For the manufacturers of tokens, it is about Cartaux and Katz.
Sources: different Internet sites and Jean Lemaitre's magnificent book in the "Editions Alternatives, "100 ans de machines à sous"