10 Pfennig - Deutsch-Eylau

Deutsch-Eylau — now Iława in northern Poland — issued this notgeld piece in 1920 as Germany's postwar coin shortage left municipal authorities scrambling to keep small change in circulation. The iron composition was a deliberate concession to material scarcity; the wartime stripping of copper and nickel from the economy had left mints unable to satisfy demand for low-denomination coinage years after the Armistice. Local magistrates across the Reich filled the gap themselves, producing thousands of distinct emergency issues, of which Funck catalogs this type as 91.6.