Interesting day at the coin shop.... the owner seems to know absolutely nothing about foreign banknotes and had a box of all sorts of notes for sale at $1.00 each. I bought a 1990's era British 5 pound note and SEVEN modern $5 Canadian notes for $1.00 each (no joke). I also got my hands on some old German and French notes from the pre-WW2 era among other oddities. Apparently the fact a note can be exchanged at the bank across the street for U.S. money means nothing. I have I.D.'d everything except the following. Any idea if the German note is currency (vs. a train ticket or something... I don't read German well) or something else? Is the Mexican note some of the fiat money Pancho Villa ordered printed? It has a neat red stamp on the back. The guy has a stack of these (maybe 20 more) I'm going to go pick up on Monday. I'm a big Pancho Villa fan.
My guess is the German note is a Notgeld, but I don't know much past that. Looks like a lot of the Notgelds I've seen.
Yes, the German language note is a notgeld (emergency money) issue from Gotha, Thuringia. The text on the left is kind of funny: "From Gotthard the abbot (guess that is Godehard of Hildesheim) and Ernest the Pious (he was duke of Saxe-Gotha), many good things once came to Gotha. They knew Not*, and they also knew Geld - but Notgeld they never issued (lit.: ordered)." * This word "Not" can mean misery, and also emergency; "Geld" is money. Christian
I kept the British note because it is an old series that is not circulated (but apparerently still worth money). The Canadians I cashed in.
