50 Pfennig - Speyer

Speyer's 1918 zinc notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency coinage that flooded Germany after the Reichsbank suspended small denomination metal circulation — a direct consequence of wartime metal requisitioning that stripped copper and nickel from the monetary system entirely. By 1918, dozens of Rhenish cities were striking their own subsidiary coinage simply to make change possible.

Zinc was the fallback material of necessity, not preference, and Speyer's pieces show the corrosion susceptibility that plagues nearly every zinc notgeld survivor from this period.