5 Pfennig - Belgern

Belgern is a small town on the Elbe in Saxony, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1917, its magistrate was forced into the notgeld business by the near-total disappearance of small-denomination coinage from circulation. The culprit was hoarding — civilians and industry alike stripped pfennig coins from circulation once the metal content approached or exceeded face value as the war ground on. Zinc was the fallback material precisely because it had little strategic competition from the military at that denomination.