10 Pfennig - Höchstadt an der Aisch Josef Dresel

Issued by a private merchant or business — Josef Dresel of Höchstadt an der Aisch — this is Kriegsgeld of the most local variety, produced in 1917 when the German war economy had stripped copper and nickel from circulation entirely. Zinc tokens of this kind were sanctioned at the municipal and commercial level to plug the chronic shortage of small change. Höchstadt an der Aisch is a small Franconian market town; that a single tradesman issued his own notgeld here reflects just how thoroughly the coinage supply had collapsed at the street level by mid-war.