10 Pfennig - Riesenburg

Riesenburg — now Prabuty, Poland — issued this notgeld piece in 1917 as the German imperial coinage system buckled under wartime metal requisitioning. By that year, nickel and copper had been systematically stripped from civilian circulation for munitions production, forcing hundreds of small municipalities to authorize their own emergency iron substitutes. Iron was itself a compromise material; it corrodes readily and strikes poorly, which accounts for the frequently disappointing surface quality seen across this entire notgeld iron series.