1 Pfennig - Scharley Stephan, Frölich & Klüpfel

Scharley was a coal-mining settlement in Upper Silesia where industrial employers routinely issued their own token coinage — Werksgeld — to pay workers in scrip redeemable only at company-owned stores, a practice that kept wages circulating within the enterprise rather than the broader local economy. Stephan, Frölich & Klüpfel were among dozens of such firms operating this system across the region's mining districts in the nineteenth century. Zinc was the material of convenience: cheap, locally abundant given the region's metallurgical industries, and sufficiently durable for the short distances these tokens typically traveled.