5 Pfennig - Cosel Feldmühle

Cosel's Feldmühle paper mill issued this iron notgeld piece in 1917 as Germany's wartime metal requisitions stripped copper and nickel from civilian circulation entirely. Industrial facilities across Silesia were among the first to produce their own emergency coinage, partly because their on-site workforces made informal currency systems practical to enforce. Iron was the default material not by preference but by elimination — most usable alloys were already committed to shell casings.