50 Pfennig - Scheinfeld

Scheinfeld was a small Franconian market town with a population barely exceeding a thousand when it issued this iron notgeld piece during the postwar small-change crisis of 1921. The chronic shortage of official coinage following Germany's defeat drove hundreds of municipalities — including minor administrative centers like Scheinfeld — to authorize their own emergency currency, iron being the material of necessity after copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort.