10 Pfennig - Wörth an der Donau Schlossapotheke

Wörth an der Donau is a small Bavarian market town, and this zinc piece is notgeld — emergency money issued by local businesses and municipalities during the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany from roughly 1916 onward, when the metal content of official coinage exceeded its face value and small change vanished from circulation almost overnight. A pharmacy issuing its own currency is not unusual for the period; hundreds of German retailers did the same to make change for customers.

Zinc was the material of necessity here, imperial-era copper and nickel having been redirected to the war effort.