20 Pfennig - Meuselwitz Prehlitzgrube

Prehlitzgrube was one of dozens of brown coal operations clustered around Meuselwitz in Thuringia, a district that sat atop one of Germany's most productive lignite seams. During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, the German small-change shortage became acute enough that private employers — mines, factories, municipal transit companies — issued their own zinc and iron tokens to pay workers and facilitate purchases at company stores. This piece is one such notgeld-adjacent scrip, functional rather than commemorative, meant to move within a closed economic loop and rarely escape it.