The pilgrim and li'l red riding hood

[Figleaf]

Here is a listing from Elie's Monnaies de Nécessité et Jetons-Monnaie.

It suggests a series of 3 highly similar tokens. In practice, they have only one side in common.

I am not sure what Pellerin & Chapron were doing. All the tokens say APPROVt des MARCHÉS (something like "supplying markets"). That's pretty generic. The other side of their tokens suggest something more specialised. Pellerin is one letter away from pélerin (pilgrim) and Chapron likewise misses only one letter from chaperon.

The 5 francs, pretty hard to find, is pictured by Elie above and says - CHOCOLAT DU PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE, the chocolate of little red riding hood.

The 1 franc is clearly its counterpart, except that it says CHOCOLAT DES PÉLERINS, the chocolate of the pilgrims.

However, the 50 centimes has a different character, even though it has a side in common with the other two above. Its legend is CAFÉ LES APPRÉCIATEURS. Is there a cafe by that name in Paris? Is it a coffee sold by that name? Or is it another reference to the company? Take into account that a French cafe may well serve a piece of chocolate with its coffee, but also that hot chocolate will usually be prepared from a piece of chocolate tablet, rather than cacao powder.

Whatever the truth is, at least we have illustrated the complete listing in Elie here.

Peter