50 Pfennig - Epe Baumwollspinnerei Germania

Issued by a private cotton spinning mill in Epe, Westphalia, this is a piece of German Notgeld — emergency currency produced by local businesses and municipalities during the acute coin shortages of World War I. As the imperial government diverted metals to the war effort, small-denomination coins vanished from circulation almost entirely, forcing employers like the Baumwollspinnerei Germania to mint their own iron tokens simply to make change for workers' wages. Iron was the fallback material precisely because the more useful metals were elsewhere.