10 Pfennig - Alfeld C. Behrens

A wartime notgeld token issued by C. Behrens of Alfeld, almost certainly a local merchant or small business covering the acute shortage of small change that gripped Germany from 1916 onward as the imperial government requisitioned copper and nickel for the war effort. Zinc was the default material for hundreds of such private issues — cheap, available, and workable without specialist equipment. Alfeld, a small town in Lower Saxony, generated a handful of these municipal and commercial pieces, most of which saw only neighborhood circulation before being superseded by paper notgeld after 1918.