My friend lives in what used to be the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He recently sent me some obsolete GDR coins and paper money which I’d like to share with all CoinTalkers. He sent 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 pfennig coins. He included the 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 mark coins. I was really surprised to also receive currency in denomination of 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 marks. He sent me all these items at no cost. :thumb:
My friend informs us (to the best of his memory) about the GDR purchasing power of this money in those days... 5 Pfennig = 1 bakery roll 20 Pfennig = tram ticket 1 Mark = a large double scoop ice cream 50 Mark = the monthly rent for a basic 3-room apartment 100 Mark = 1 new LP Vinyl music record from W. Germany In 1990 my friend was very happy to exchange this money into West German DM but then that soon got converted to the Euro.
It is interesting that the couple of these coins appear to be commemorative issues (like this city of Meissen coin) and they were apparently used in circulation.
Very nice. Thanks for sharing! I was in Germany when the wall came down. It was awesome to see the flood of people coming into what used to be West Germany in their Trabbis, looking up long lost relatives or just enjoying their freedom.
Yes, the people in the GDR got a "political" exchange rate: 1-1 up to a certain amount (4000 M for most people). For anything beyond that, the rate was 2-1 otherwise, ie. for 2M you would get 1 DM. Well, the prices in the GDR had always been "political" - what was considered basic needs could be had cheap, what was considered luxury was very expensive. The euro, in terms of cash, came twelve years later. Your friend can probably tell you more about this, but the GDR had two types of commems: Pieces that were made primarily for export - usually silver, high relief, low mintage, fairly expensive. GDR citizens could get those if they were in Kulturbund collectors clubs (and had a bit of luck ...). The others were Cu-Ni coins, often with relatively high mintages, and those were easier to get and to some extent even circulated in the GDR. Christian
My friend in the GDR was not a coin collector. He just learned that I collect World coins & sent these to me. :smile Here is one GDR coin I had in my collection before this nice gift arrived.
A nice piece in great condition. Kind of interesting that those older GDR coins did not have the country name yet but simply said Germany ... Christian
Out of curiosity, has your friend ever seen a 200 mark note or a 500 mark note? I've seen them for sale, but I remember reading somewhere (I don't recall if it was a true story or conjecture) that the 200 / 500 GDR notes on the market were all stolen by a group of teenagers in the 1990s from a vault where tons of former GDR currency was being stored before destruction. The 200 / 500 GDR notes were allegedly printed in the 1980s but never released for circulation. I was wondering if there was any insight into that.
Those 200 and 500 M notes (dated 1985, never issued) were brought to a tunnel system near Halberstadt, ST where they were supposed to rot and decompose, along with all the other DDR Mark notes. Those tunnels, mostly built in the last phase of WW2 by concentration camp prisoners, had later been used for storage purposes by the GDR forces. In 1999 two men from Halberstadt managed to get into the tunnel and steal quite a few of those ex-notes. Later the two (not exactly teenagers but 24 and 26 years old) were sentenced to four months each - strictly speaking, all they had stolen was printed paper, not money. Anyway, for several reasons (the notes would rot very slowly, tunnel safety, etc.) the old notes were then moved from that place to the Buschhaus, NI power plant where they were burned. Took about 300 containers to transport them, and two months to burn them ... Christian
