50 Pfennigs - Reisholz Deutsche Carborundum Werke

Deutsche Carborundum-Werke was a manufacturer of abrasive and grinding materials operating in Reisholz, a district of Düsseldorf. This piece is a notgeld token, issued during the severe small-change shortages that plagued German industry in the early 1920s — factories and municipalities alike printed or struck their own emergency currency when the Reichsbank could not keep circulating coinage in supply. Zinc was the material of necessity: cheap, available, and easily stamped in-house or by local die-cutters.

Hasselmann's catalog of industrial notgeld places this among the better-documented Düsseldorf-area factory issues.