Has anyone ever seen one of these before? It's about the size of an American penny and is aluminum. It says "Chambre de Commerce de Nice. Des Alpes Maritimes 1920" on one side and "5 Centimes" on the other. I know Nice is a city in France, and this is kind of similar to the style of French coinage at that time, but I've never seen anything like it before. Is it a token or some sort of post-war emergency coinage like in Germany, or something else?
It's exactly what you think, an emergency local issue coin. Like German notgeld and kriegsgeld pieces of the same time, most are relatively inexpensive. The French also made similar pieces for their territories abroad, such as Djibouti, Dakar, and Suez Canal. Most of those pieces are pretty valuable.
Just as had happened in Germany, high inflation led to coin hoarding, as the metal of the coins was worth more than their spendable value.
Where they mainly issued in the north and east where the Germans were? I haven't seen many southern or southwestern issues around. Except for the Nice one on the above posting.
