5 Pfennig - Simbach am Inn

Simbach am Inn issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917, when the imperial German wartime metal requisitions had stripped municipalities of copper and nickel stocks. Small-denomination coinage essentially ceased at the national level, forcing hundreds of German and Austrian border towns to produce their own emergency issues. Simbach sits directly on the Inn River opposite the Austrian town of Braunau — a crossing point that saw significant military supply traffic during the war, making functional small change a genuine local necessity rather than a collector novelty.