10 Pfennig - Offenbach Mainwerke G.m.b.H.

Offenbach Mainwerke G.m.b.H. was a gas and waterworks utility serving the Offenbach am Main region, and like hundreds of German industrial firms during the early Weimar period, it issued its own emergency coinage — Notgeld — when the postwar coin shortage made small change effectively impossible to obtain through official channels. Zinc was the material of necessity, not choice; copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort, and what remained was jealously controlled.