In early Era 6, during the tenth decade of the era (E6-90 to E6-99), the Mazes were experiencing a copper shortage; most of it was used for industrial applications, such as the copper jacketing used in bullets, leaving very little for other applications. As such, minting of new copper coins was severely slowed down, resulting in shortages of copper coins. Since the next highest coin denomination was silver coins, which was worth five times as much as copper, it made smaller, everyday transactions more difficult.
The story of how brass coins came to be is thought to have originated in the military town of Camp Baxter, where it was a common partice practice to cut the heads off of spent cartridge cases and use the resulting brass discs as scrips, using the headstamps and the different sizes as currency for trading various commodities, such as rations, cigarettes, or medical supplies. Visitors from other towns noticed that the local stores seemed to accept both real coins and brass scrips, and although the exact conversion ratio was lost to time, it was commonly understood that a single case head may have had a value ranging between 25 cents and 1 Parallar, depending on the caliber.
A visiting engineer, noticing the practice, asked the local captain what they did with the cut brass, since they were now useless brass tubes that could not be used for [[handloading]]. The officer replied that they stockpiled the brass, in the hopes of selling it as scrap brass for melting, and acquiring money with which to trade the scrips for, "so that I can finally pay my men their salary," in his own words.