25 Pfennig - Wollin

Wollin — today Wolin, Poland — issued this iron notgeld piece in 1919 as Germany's postwar coin shortage left municipal governments across Pomerania scrambling to produce emergency small change. The wartime requisitioning of copper and nickel had gutted the Reichsbank's ability to supply subsidiary coinage, and the problem persisted well into the early Weimar period. Iron was the stopgap material of administrative convenience, not choice — it corrodes readily in circulation, which explains why survivors in clean condition are harder to find than the original mintages might suggest.