50 Pfennig - Kötzting

Kötzting issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1918 as the German imperial economy buckled under wartime metal requisitions. By that stage, copper and nickel had been systematically stripped from circulation for military use, forcing hundreds of small municipalities — market towns included — to produce their own emergency coinage under authorization from regional authorities. Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough, but notoriously difficult to strike cleanly and prone to corrosion, which accounts for the frequency of pitted or oxidized survivors from this series.