15 Pfennigs - Berlin A.E.G.

AEG — the Berlin electrical giant founded by Emil Rathenau in 1883 — issued notgeld tokens like this one during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s, when chronic inflation made hoarding of metal coins rational behavior for ordinary workers. Factory tokens of this type were accepted at company canteens and shops, functioning as a closed-circulation scrip that kept the wage economy moving when the Reichsbank could not. Zinc was the material of necessity; copper and nickel had long since become too valuable to mint into low-denomination pieces.