Picture Of The Day : Notgeld Not Gold

Many years ago I found a small collection of German emergency money in a second-hand shop and paid a few pounds for it. The emergency notes (known as Notgeld) date from the period following the end of World War 1 and they were issued by Local Municipalities and local Savings Banks. They were never legal tender, but they were accepted locally during a period when metal coins were in short supply because of either the war or the post-war economic crisis. They were widely issued in both Germany and Austria and examples can sometimes be found from countries such as France, Spain and Russia. Over the years I have added to my collection and I now must have 200 or so of them. I suspect that if one checked on eBay, they will not be worth a vast amount, but they are interesting and a reminder of previous economic crises. Not a crop of gold, just a crop of Notgeld.

Picture Of The Day : Ein Hundert Mark

Scanning banknotes is not as easy as you might think. Many scanners now have software which detects banknotes and produces a deliberately degraded image. This is annoying if you are either a forger or if you like collecting old banknotes and showing them off. My skills, unfortunately, are limited to the latter rather than the former. This is a German 100 Mark banknote. Whilst it is dated 1908, its' green shield and serial number suggests it was printed in the period between 1918 and 1922, just before the great German hyperinflation.