I've seen a lot of different German notgeld notes from the World War I period, and they often have neat designs and don't seem to cost much. I'm wondering if I was to try to collect these, what kind of a task would I be setting myself up for? How many different ones are out there? Can you trust that most of them are genuine or are they frequently reproduced?
there are over 50,000 different notgeld notes. Many of them are in a series that tells a story. a series can be as few as 2 notes to over 150 notes. Most people seem to collect them by locality. Richard
Like anything else, popular notes are most likely faked, never seen or heard of one personally though. I am collecting notgeld by a very specific theme depicted on them, got about 35 so far. As far as I know, I need all 6 from a certain series, and 2 different ones to make my collection close to completion or maybe complete. I have 2 notgeld catalogs, Notgeld Osterreich Osterreich-Ungarn 1914-1918 and Grabowski vol. 10 but couldn't find my notes in there, or information about more notes on the subject I collect.
Foreign paper money I'm interested in has always just been something with a picture that I like, so it's not really any one theme. I like history, I like animals and ships. Those are things that attract me. With 50,000 made though it sounds like quite an endeavor. Am I correct that they exist for Austria and maybe France too?
yes. Austria and France as well as several other countries have issued emergency local currency. The difference is that Germany's notes were only actually used for a short time but were produced as collector's items fore quite some time. Instead of rather bland designs designed for functionality, German notes became a medium for art and expression.
Notgeld literally means "emergency money". The term notgeld is usually used to describe notes issued during and after WWI in any number of countries including Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Poland, Luxemburg, Hungary although for some of these countries the notes are also referred to as "locals". In Germany, there were many different types of notgeld issued. 1) Verkehrausgabe - small change notes issued 1914-15. 2) Serienscheine - small denomination notes issued 1920-21 usually in sets sold to collectors. 3) Grossgeld - higher denomination notes issued for the inflation of 1922. 4) Hyperinflation - extremely high denomination notes issued during the hyperinflation of 1923. 5) Reichsbahn notes - notes issued by the German railroad during the 1923 hyperinflation. 6) Wertbestandiges notes -- issued in late 1923, the denomination of these notes are expressed in goldpfennig and goldmarks and are pegged to the US dollar. Dr. Arnold Keller, the German notgeld cataloguer, once opined that there were upwards of 175,000 different German notgeld notes alone. US Depression Scrip (1930s) and notes from the Panics of 1873, 1893, 1907 and 1914 are types of emergency currency. The Boise Idaho one cent pieces of 1943 are emergency currency. Italian circulating cheques of 1943-45 and the mini-assegni of the mid 1970s are also.
I only collect the humourous examples: I sure wish I could find a ducat defecating donkey for my home zoo.
