50 Pfennig - Kronach

Kronach issued this iron notgeld piece in 1917 as the wartime metal requisitions stripped German municipalities of their copper and nickel stocks. The shift to iron was not a local choice — it was imposed by necessity as the Reich's military demands consumed conventional coinage metals. Iron Pfennig notgeld from Bavarian towns like Kronach survive in far better condition than their zinc counterparts from the same period, as iron corrodes predictably rather than flaking, but even so, uncorroded examples are genuinely uncommon after more than a century.