50 Pfennig - Schwäbisch Hall

Schwäbisch Hall issued iron Notgeld in 1918 as the Imperial German war economy had stripped copper, nickel, and zinc from civilian coinage to feed munitions production. Iron was the last viable substitute. Municipal issues like this one filled the gap left by the collapse of small-change distribution from Berlin, with individual cities and towns granted emergency authority to produce their own circulating tokens — a delegation of monetary function that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier.

Iron pieces from this period corrode aggressively in anything but dry storage. Survivors in undamaged condition are genuinely scarce.