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5 Pfennig - Cham
| Issuer | Stadtgemeinde Cham (City of Cham) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 1.50 g |
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| Obverse description | The municipal coat of arms of Cham occupies the central field, depicting a quartered shield surmounted by a mural crown with three towers; the shield displays crossed implements over a hatched background in the upper half and a fortified gateway with flanking towers in the lower half, all supported by decorative foliate mantling on either side. The circular legend STADTGEMEINDE above and CHAM below arcs around the device, separated by small stops. A fine pearl or bead border frames the entire design at the rim. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Cham's 1917 zinc notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of German municipal emergency coinage, when the wartime metal requisitions had stripped copper and nickel from civilian production entirely. The Bavarian town of Cham — a modest market community on the Regen River near the Bohemian border — was among hundreds of small municipalities forced to contract local production of substitute coinage when the imperial supply chain simply stopped delivering small change.
Zinc was the fallback material precisely because it had few competing military applications at that stage of the war. Cham's pieces saw genuine pocket circulation, and survivors in clean condition are accordingly uncommon.