1 Pfennig - Gosslershausen A. Conitzer

Gosslarhausen — a small village in the Duchy of Brunswick — was home to one of the thousands of private merchant token issuers that proliferated across the German states in the mid-to-late 19th century when official small-denomination coinage was chronically undersupplied. A. Conitzer's zinc pfennig filled a gap that the state mint simply wasn't filling at the retail level. Hasselmann catalogued these merchant issues systematically, but survivorship is unpredictable — tokens from rural issuers in minor villages were discarded rather than saved once official coinage became adequate after 1871 unification.