50 Pfennig - Laufen

Issued in 1918 by the district administration of Laufen — a small Bavarian town on the Salzach river, directly across from the Austrian town of Oberndorf — this is Notgeld, emergency coinage produced locally when the Imperial German government could no longer guarantee adequate small-denomination coin supply during the final year of the war. Zinc had become the fallback metal across hundreds of such municipal issues as copper and nickel were consumed by armaments production. The nickel-plated variant listed under the Menzel reference likely reflects an inconsistent finish applied at the point of striking rather than a deliberate compositional change.