My father-in-law gave some really interesting world paper money. I collect coins so I'm a rookie when it comes to the paper money. I posted three and I believe two are Germany and one could be from Poland? They are very cool and beautiful to look at.
The first note was issued by the Germans for use in territory it occupied in eastern Europe in WWI. The second note is a regular issue German 1000 mark note. The third note was issued by the short-lived independent Ukraine in 1919.
The German occupation note and the 50 Karbonartz (sp?) are uncommon but of minimal value in that condition. The 1000 mark is only of value with the earlier dates, a late 19th C example would be pretty valuable. They circulated when one represented 1000 marks in gold, that was about 200 dollars at the time. There are series and serial number clues to when the 1000 mark note was actually printed, but the onset of rapid inflation around the end of the Great War, leading soon to hyper-inflation meant very large numbers of the later printings produced notes that in a very short time were not the the paper they were printed on, literally. This poem (at the end, to make it easier to skip) and the note were produced about the same time, 1919, the note represents the link between the stable society and solid money of the turn of the century and the anarchy and disruption that follwed the disaster of WW1. Although it has minimal monetary value, if you have some knowledge of the history that surrounded it, even the cheapest note has a story to tell and bank note collectors are far richer in mind with a few notes like these, well understood, than with modern notes whose only distinction is a minor production error. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Thank you. What I love like coins, is the history. Who's hands held that money and used it. The poem was great reading.
