5 Pfennig - Eggolsheim Johann Kraus Erstes Gem. Warengeschäft

This is a piece of Notgeld — emergency token currency issued by a private business rather than any governmental body. Johann Kraus's cooperative goods store in Eggolsheim, a small Franconian village in Bavaria, issued zinc tokens of this kind during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s, when hoarding and metal scarcity made official coinage nearly impossible to find in daily commerce. Local shops frequently filled the gap themselves, accepting their own tokens in lieu of state-issued currency.

Zinc was the material of necessity, not preference — copper and nickel had been commandeered for the war effort years earlier and supplies remained constrained long after 1918.