2 Pfennig - Offenbach Collet and Engelhard A.G.

Collet & Engelhard A.G. was one of several Offenbach leather-goods firms that issued notgeld during the acute coin shortages of World War I, when the German imperial government's wartime metal demands stripped copper and nickel from everyday circulation almost entirely. Zinc was the obvious substitute — cheap, available, and already familiar from minor coinage — but private firm issues like this one occupied a legal grey area that the Reich tolerated out of necessity rather than approval.

Most factory-issued notgeld saw heavy use within the issuing plant's own payroll system, redeemed against wages rather than traded freely.