Hi Everyone, Just curious about this. I was really stunned to see these high denominations! I think it would be an interesting World Coin Type Set. I have seen the 1923 50 Million Mark and the 1923 1/2 Million Mark Coins. Have any of you put this type of set together? Would be interesting to see all the different Highest denomination coins that were produced. Please share your highest denomination Coins. I would love to see them. Here is the first one I am going to get for this Type Set.
There is a one billion mark coin in that series too.... I wish I had one, but they are rather pricey. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Germany-We...754435?hash=item3f897f3343:g:e3kAAOSwwgRZ5LKK
Kind of amusing that they were producing the above in the same year they were producing these. 1 million, 50 million, 1 billion and... 500. Why bother?
I top out at 10,000! Pretty amazing the spread in denominations you get this year for this coin type! They may have well have struck a 50 Jillion Zillion Mk. coin!
Yes, the German notgeld took a hosing in the 20's. They say that it took a bushel full of the paper notes to buy a loaf of bread. It's one of the reasons that Hitler and his party got a fingerhold back in the later 20's
The 500 Mark was the highest denomination coin produced by the German government. Anything larger from that time was Notgeld currency.
Inflation was so rampant that 500 in January probably had the same buying power at 1 billion at the end.
See the graph that @chrsmat71 posted. Twelve months are an incredibly long time when you have a galloping (or hyper-)inflation. On 31 January 1923, 1 gold mark was 10,000 mark; in early October it was 100,000,000 mark - and 100,000,000,000 mark in early November ... Those Westfalen notgeld issues were not actually means of payment. They were basically used for fundraising. Also keep in mind that a German billion is an American trillion, so that "1 Billion" piece had a face value of one trillion. Christian
A Dear friend from many years ago told me , She had saved 3600 mark to go to school, and when she could get into a bank they gave her 2, 50,000 mark notes an apologized smallest they had, that got her two loaves of bread.
In the non-notgeld category, Turkey got pretty high up in modern times. Here's a 10 million lira I have.
The book When Money Dies is all about the inflation in Weimar Germany. There is a story in there about a woman who lived in German before WWI and had enough money in here bank account to live very comfortably. But she had to go to Switzerland for some emergency medical treatment and did not get back to Germany for several years. When she returned she found her account had been closed. She asked why she had not been notified and was told there was not enough money in the account to pay for the stamp to mail such a notification. Had the money be in gold coins instead of marks she could have continued her life as normal. Instead she was penniless.
It's the old story - winning a war (militarily) is relatively easy, but "winning" a stable peace afterwards is tough. The spiral of reparations, occupation of the Ruhr area, and the German government's decision to print more money in order to comply with those demands, made things much worse. Anyway, yes, those who had Mark amounts in their bank accounts, or were paid in Mark, definitely lost a lot. Those who had precious metals, real estate or maybe farmland, were somewhat better off. Interestingly, some definitely profited from the situation. Hugo Stinnes for example built an industrial conglomerate mostly based on credits: Money that he could very comfortably pay back during the hyperinflation ... There is an amusing story, obviously not from somebody who really suffered in those years, about a traveler from outside Germany who sits down in a café in Berlin, orders a coffee for 1,000 marks, reads a book, looks at the people ... and after a while orders a second cup. When he wants to leave and asks for the bill, the waiter says, that would be 3,000 marks. Nah, I had only two cups, the tourist says. Sorry, Sir, replies the waiter, the price went up from 1,000 to 2,000 between your two orders. Christian
What is also interesting in my opinion: In order to make high face values a little "handier", governments sometimes resort to fancy solutions. Turkish coins from before the currency reform would say, for example, "100 BIN LIRA". Now "bin" means "thousand", but 100 looks better than 100,000. Similarly, on some Hungarian pengő notes you see the word milpengő for million pengő or even b-pengő for trillion pengő. So this - not a coin, and not my image, sorry - is a "1 Milliárd" (= 1 billion) "B.-Pengő" (= trillion pengő) note: https://static.darabanth.com/images/1/2/1286147.jpg Christian