25 Pfennig - Buer in Westfalen

Buer was an independent industrial city in the Ruhrgebiet before its forced merger into Gelsenkirchen in 1928. This iron notgeld piece dates from the acute small-change shortages of 1918–1921, when hundreds of German municipalities issued their own emergency coinage after the Imperial government failed to maintain adequate circulating coin. Iron was the material of necessity — copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort, and municipal issuers took whatever the local foundries could supply.