10 Pfennigs - Dresden Akt. Ges. F. Glasindustrie

Issued by the Aktiengesellschaft für Glasindustrie in Dresden, this is a piece of German notgeld — emergency coinage produced by private firms and municipalities during the acute metal and currency shortages of the First World War and its aftermath. Industrial companies frequently issued their own subsidiary coinage to pay workers and facilitate canteen transactions when Reichsbank-supplied small change dried up entirely. Zinc was the material of necessity; copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort years earlier.