Issued jointly by the districts of Bonn and Sieg in 1918, this iron notgeld piece is a direct product of the wartime metal shortages that stripped Germany's subsidiary coinage from circulation. By mid-war, copper, nickel, and zinc had been commandeered for munitions production, forcing municipalities to fill the vacuum with locally authorized emergency issues. The Bonn-Siegkreis pieces were among hundreds of such district-level issues, each with its own authorization and distribution limits — rarely travelling far beyond the issuing region, which partly explains why survivors turn up in limited geographic spread today.
Issued jointly by the districts of Bonn and Sieg in 1918, this iron notgeld piece is a direct product of the wartime metal shortages that stripped Germany's subsidiary coinage from circulation. By mid-war, copper, nickel, and zinc had been commandeered for munitions production, forcing municipalities to fill the vacuum with locally authorized emergency issues. The Bonn-Siegkreis pieces were among hundreds of such district-level issues, each with its own authorization and distribution limits — rarely travelling far beyond the issuing region, which partly explains why survivors turn up in limited geographic spread today.