10 Centimes German Occupation Coinage

Belgium's pre-war copper coinage was systematically melted by German occupation authorities after 1914, and zinc was substituted not as a wartime compromise but as deliberate policy — stripping the occupied territory of its copper reserves for German munitions production. The Kaiserreich issued these coins under a dual-language format reflecting Belgium's linguistic divide, a detail the occupation administration was careful to maintain to avoid inflaming Flemish-Walloon tensions at a politically sensitive moment.

Zinc corrodes aggressively in circulation, and surviving problem-free examples are genuinely scarce. Most survivors show the characteristic white oxidation and surface granularity inherent to the alloy.