10 Pfennig - Elberfeld

Elberfeld issued this iron notgeld piece in 1917 as the German war economy stripped copper and nickel from civilian coinage for munitions production. The city — later absorbed into the newly created Wuppertal in 1929 — was one of hundreds of German municipalities forced to improvise emergency small change as federal coin production collapsed under wartime metal requisitions. Iron was universally loathed as a coinage material: it rusted in circulation, stuck to magnets, and wore badly in the press.