10 Pfennig - Oels Kaufmännischer Verein

Issued by the commercial traders' association of Oels in Silesia — now Oleśnica, Poland — this iron notgeld piece dates to the acute coin shortage of 1918, when the German imperial government had stripped copper and nickel from circulation for war production. Municipal bodies, private associations, and local commercial guilds across Germany and Austria filled the gap with their own emergency issues, none of which were legal tender beyond their immediate issuing community.

Iron was the material of last resort, prone to rust and difficult to strike cleanly. Surviving examples in problem-free condition are harder to locate than the catalog numbers suggest.