Bayerische Überlandcentrale was a rural electricity cooperative that expanded aggressively across Bavaria in the early twentieth century, and like many industrial operations of the World War I period, it issued its own notgeld coinage when small-denomination imperial coins were hoarded or melted. Zinc was the material of necessity — copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort, leaving municipalities and private concerns alike to stamp tokens from whatever base metal remained available.
The Haidhof facility served a genuinely remote catchment area, which likely kept circulation of this piece tightly local and the surviving population correspondingly thin.
Bayerische Überlandcentrale was a rural electricity cooperative that expanded aggressively across Bavaria in the early twentieth century, and like many industrial operations of the World War I period, it issued its own notgeld coinage when small-denomination imperial coins were hoarded or melted. Zinc was the material of necessity — copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort, leaving municipalities and private concerns alike to stamp tokens from whatever base metal remained available.
The Haidhof facility served a genuinely remote catchment area, which likely kept circulation of this piece tightly local and the surviving population correspondingly thin.