50 Pfennig - Pappenheim

Pappenheim's zinc notgeld coinage emerged from the same municipal desperation that drove hundreds of German towns to strike their own emergency issues between 1917 and 1921, as the imperial and later republican central authorities failed to supply adequate small change. Zinc was the material of necessity — copper and nickel were war materiel first, coinage second. The Funck reference places this firmly within the documented series, but locally issued zinc pieces from small Bavarian municipalities saw heavy pocket circulation and corrode aggressively, making clean survivors genuinely difficult to source.