Eduard Meyer was a merchant or tradesman in Friedrichswerth, a small settlement in the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who issued this zinc notgeld token during the severe small-change shortages that plagued provincial Germany in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Municipal and private token issues like this one filled a genuine transactional vacuum — the imperial coinage simply did not penetrate rural commerce in sufficient quantities.
Hasselmann's cataloguing of this piece places it among a dense cluster of Thuringian private issues, most of which saw extremely localized circulation and survive today almost exclusively in collector holdings.
Eduard Meyer was a merchant or tradesman in Friedrichswerth, a small settlement in the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who issued this zinc notgeld token during the severe small-change shortages that plagued provincial Germany in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Municipal and private token issues like this one filled a genuine transactional vacuum — the imperial coinage simply did not penetrate rural commerce in sufficient quantities.
Hasselmann's cataloguing of this piece places it among a dense cluster of Thuringian private issues, most of which saw extremely localized circulation and survive today almost exclusively in collector holdings.