50 Pfennigs - Hamburg Rudolf Neugebauer and Co

Rudolf Neugebauer & Co. was a Hamburg-based firm that issued this zinc notgeld token during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s, when municipal and commercial issuers alike were forced to produce their own subsidiary currency to keep transactions moving. Zinc was the practical choice for private issuers — cheap, available, and requiring no special mint authorization.

The Hasselmann reference places this firmly within the documented Hamburg private issues, a category that saw dozens of local businesses print or strike their own fractional currency before Reichsbank policy eventually reined in the practice.