300 bags of gelt for $99 (plus shipping)

But it's getting off topic in the direction of linguistics, which I think is cool! But, yeah, non-numismatic.

 

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If there was enough money in it, the top two might

 

The liguistics about money I think isn't off topic at all. but my dragging into a discussion of Jewish history was a bit over the top.

 

By the way, in German one way of wishing somebody else good luck is to say Hals- und Beinbruch (neck and leg fracture). Huh? Part of this is that you would sometimes say a negative wish, hoping that the opposite will come true. But the interesting part is that the origin is a totally different one: The term comes from Hebrew hazlacha we beracha which means something like luck and blessing. In Yiddish that became hazloche un broche. Non-Jewish Germans who did not understand that would try to get some sense into this.

Or take the Pleitegeier (lit. bankruptcy vulture). You use the word in German as a symbol of a desperate economic situation - if you are about to go bankrupt, that vulture is flying above your house, company, etc. It is a common term, but the Yiddish connection is not that obvious: The first part, Pleite, is derived from Hebrew pleta/peleita (escape) and then Western Yiddish plajte. The second part was imported from German into W. Yiddish - the verb gehen (go) became gajen. The Yiddish plajte-gajer thus was somebody who escaped or fled (and the implied meaning was: because he was bankrupt). Well, gajer sounds like Geier, and ... at least that second example is vaguely money related, hehe.

(Hebrew and Yiddish spellings will vary due to transcription, and hopefully not due to any mistakes. ) Now as for your bags of gelt, well, the coins sure look nice - I attached one from that website. But they are suspiciously inexpensive ...

Christian

 

Interesting. I know so little about my own heritage.