5 Pfennig - Wurzach

Wurzach issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1918 as the German imperial economy buckled under wartime metal requisitioning. By that point, copper and nickel had been systematically stripped from civilian coinage for munitions production, forcing hundreds of small municipalities to produce their own emergency currency. Bad Wurzach, a modest market town in Upper Swabia with a population well under five thousand, was among the smaller communities driven to this measure — which partly explains why surviving examples see consistent collector interest relative to issues from larger cities.