In fact, his 1929 silver piece was France’s first 20-franc coin of any kind since the gold “Rooster” had disappeared with the outbreak of WWI. And this 20-franc series too would fall victim to a world war, ending a decade later with the tiny mintage of 1939. The next year, in 1940, Paris would begin her gray period. One decade more would pass before France had another new 20-franc coin, in 1950, but it was a much reduced thing, of aluminum-bronze. In 1929 however…
Once upon a time the introduction (or return) of a large circulating silver coin usually meant a country was feeling pretty good about itself. Certainly that was the case in 1929 France, when this big silver coin appeared.
A pair of public occasions for revisiting the victory of 1918 presented themselves in 1929. Foch and Clemenceau both died that year, and somewhere amid the remembered losses and the remembered triumphs, there were also chances to leave the past behind. The “Spirit of Locarno” was alive (European reconciliation…and on French terms). The Kellog-Briand Pact—“The Pact of Paris,” in some places—came into force in 1929. War itself had been forsworn, and some large part of that initiative had a “Made in France” label affixed to it.
The year before, too, the franc had been fixed. Gone was the old franc Germinal--and with it, about 80% of the French national debt. In its place was the new franc Poincaré.
Perhaps best of all, in 1929 the economy was fine, and would be for a few years yet. The Great Depression hit France later than it did the U.S. or the UK, and that gave many Frenchmen an extra feeling of satisfaction in the way they had things arranged.
But it would evaporate very quickly, of course. 1932 and Depression. 1933 and…well, maybe it’s enough to just say that these silver 20-franc pieces were demonetized 16 April 1945.
v.
