50 Pfennig - Altena Stahldrahtwerk Rahmer

Altena, in the Sauerland region of Westphalia, was historically the center of Germany's wire-drawing industry — a trade dating back to the sixteenth century. During the First World War, acute metal shortages prompted hundreds of private German firms to issue their own emergency coinage, known as Notgeld. H. Rahmer's steelwire works was one of dozens of Altena industrial employers to do so, paying wages in tokens that workers could redeem locally when Reichsbank small change had effectively vanished from circulation by 1917.