10 Pfennig - Lugau Lugauer Steinkohlen Bauverein

The Lugauer Steinkohlen-Bauverein was a coal mining cooperative operating in the Lugau-Oelsnitz coalfield of Saxony, one of the most productive hard coal districts in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany. Company scrip of this type — issued by mining associations to pay workers in tokens redeemable only at company-owned stores — was a deliberate mechanism for keeping wages circulating within the enterprise rather than the broader economy. Zinc with nickel plating was the practical wartime and postwar substitute when base metals were rationed by the imperial and later Weimar authorities.