50 pfennig

The lack of small coins in the retail trade is a huge inconvenience for the public. Sometimes it even paralyses trade, as retailers are unable to give change to customers. They then have to resort to various impractical alternatives. One such problem occurred in Germany before the end of the First World War when a shortage crisis affected almost all areas of life in the war-ravaged country. There was also a shortage of small coins, and not only bullion coins, which were needed to purchase goods in neutral countries, but also coins made of common metals. Coins were snatched from circulation by a desperate public, who saw them as an attractive commodity to be hoarded and later exchanged for scarce goods. Retail trade based on petty cash, therefore, began to collapse. The above problem was also experienced in Koszalin, where the magistrate decided to counteract by issuing replacement coins. The peculiarity of the Koszalin issues is not only the octagonal shape of the 50 pfennig coins, the specimen of which is featured here, but also the relatively large number of companies commissioned to produce them. This in turn resulted in numerous varieties, especially of the 10 pfennig coins, minted by three companies: H. Chr. Lauer in Nuremberg, Mütze & Hennig in Leipzig and Gustav Brehmer in Markneuenkirchen. All coins were minted in zinc, a relatively cheap and malleable material. On account of this, the presses for minting coins did not wear out too quickly and production costs were reduced. The number of varieties preserved testifies to the high demand of the trade for this particular denomination. Mieszko Pawłowski