At the recent Central States show I picked up several notgeld and similar items. This is an interest area of mine, and while I've never made a concerted effort to build my collection of these, I pick them up whenever I come across them. I got all of these from one or two dealers' junk bins at the show. There are items here from both Germany and France. Here are the German ones.
I too do not make a concerted effort to collect the notgeld coins, although I am always on the lookout for ones I don't have. I currently have examples from 709 different locations.
Mostly. A few of these examples are in iron also. They were made during and right after World War I when there must have been a shortage of coinage. There's also some porcelain ones from Germany.
I think the silver price spiked after WW1 and drove most countries' silver coinage out of circulation. I think that's why the UK switched from 92.5% to 50% fine in 1920 as well. Partly wartime inflation, partly suspending the convertibility of paper money to gold during the war drove up demand for silver. Terrible economic times tend to lead to very interesting coinage! Anyway, the French "notgeld" is very cool, I haven't seen them before. Thanks for posting.
