10 Pfennig - Karlstadt am Main Portland Cementfabrik

Issued by a private cement works on the Main River in Bavaria, this notgeld piece dates to the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany during and immediately after World War I, when municipal and corporate issuers filled the void left by hoarded official coinage. Industrial firms — factories, mines, foundries — frequently issued their own tokens redeemable within their own payroll or company-store systems, giving employers a degree of monetary control over their workforce that central authorities periodically tried, and largely failed, to curtail.

Zinc was the default material precisely because copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort.