50 Pfennigs - Bodenmais Georg Sagerer

Georg Sagerer operated a retail business in Bodenmais, a small market town in the Bavarian Forest, and issued this zinc notgeld piece during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s. Local merchants across Bavaria routinely stepped in to fill the gap left by official coinage, issuing their own fractional pieces redeemable only at the counter of origin — a patchwork system tolerated by authorities out of necessity rather than policy.

Zinc was the default material for merchant-issued pieces of this type, abundant and cheap to strike, though it corrodes aggressively in circulation.