50 Pfennigs - Dresden Akt. Ges. F. Glasindustrie

Issued by a Dresden glassworks cooperative during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early Weimar period, this zinc notgeld piece circulated as emergency currency among workers and local vendors when the Reichsbank could not supply adequate coinage. The Aktien-Gesellschaft für Glasindustrie was among hundreds of industrial firms across Saxony that took matters into their own hands between 1920 and 1922, producing factory-specific currency redeemable within their own commercial network.

Zinc was the material of necessity — aluminum and iron had been exhausted by wartime demands, and brass was too valuable to commit to low-denomination scrip.