10 Pfennig - Bensheim

Bensheim issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917 as wartime metal requisitions stripped German municipalities of their copper and nickel supplies. The Reich had been systematically recalling higher-value coinage metals since 1915, leaving local authorities to fill the small-change vacuum themselves. Zinc was the compromise material — abundant, workable, but corroding readily in circulation, which accounts for the difficulty in finding survivors with clean surfaces.