Russian Kopecks, German 1/2 Marks, Kriegsgeld and Erzatzgeld

My son and spent the day at the NYINC; great time and overwhelming. I've decided to collect WW1 era coins (1914 - 1919) from combatant European nations. Most of what is turning up is German and Russian... the Russian coins are interesting because of the major political changes in 1917. For example, I found a 1917 50 Penna from Russian-occupied Finland that has a crown over the eagle's head, and another coin, presumably minted post October 1917, with no crown over the eagle!

For German there were several pretty little 1/2 Mark coins (my favorite so far). I rejected one because it had a major scratch. A much more savvy collector looked at it and corrected me: Because the flaw was raised not etched in he explained that the flaw was the result of cracked dies, and that rather then scratched it was in fact a kind of error coin. However, I'm only coming across 1914 or 1918, nothing much in between.

I also want to collect WW2 era Soviet coins; I was warned here that they are tough to come by and I've certainly not seen any in the junk bins I rummage. However, today I found a 1940 2 Kopeck and a 1941 3 Kopeck. Joy!

Anyway, I digress. Along the way I picked out two square German coins minted in 1918 and 1917 that apperently were replacement coinage due to shortages etc. called Erzatz or Krieggeld. Seems like each German region minted their own, as a name and a coat of arms appears on each. So, I got home, broke out my Krause, and lo and behold, nothing. No pictures or listings.

Does anyone have a reference for this kind of coinage? Is it considered a token or some other kind of issue and thus not listed in Krause?

Thanks in advance for any info you can share.

Mike

 

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I took a look in my Russian coin collection but unfortunately I don't have spares - just bad culls that I gave them away. Those years can be quite a challenge. I'll built up a page on the Soviet coinage when I get a chance to.

 

Finland was a more or less autonomous part of Sweden until 1809, then a more or less autonomous part of Russia (Grand Duchy of F.) until 1917. The coins without the crown were minted before October, I think, under the provisional or interim government following the February 1917 revolution in Russia.

The Krause, and similar German catalogs, do in general not list such local issues. Notgeld pieces are way too numerous to be listed in such catalogs, and most of them were not issued by a central authority but by cities or even companies, to cope with the lack of small change in those years. There are specialized catalogs for those issues - in German that would be the Funck and/or the Menzel. But since I do not collect Notgeld/Ersatzgeld, I cannot tell much about those catalogs, or whether there are any in English ...

Christian

 

Hi!
I have such catalog in 2 volumes.
Give me the picture of you coins, I'll give you the translation of them and price.

 

Here is the actual price list for the Soviet coins (also included WW2 era).
http://www.arcamax.ru/price_reg21-58.htm

Prices are in Russian rubels, here is the converter.
http://www.oanda.com/converter/classic?user=travelshop&lang=des.

 

There is also the Catalogue of German War Tokens by R. Lamb

It has pictures of the coins and is pretty complete...problem is price is way out of date...but its cheap. There are a few others as well.

Welcome fellow Emergency/War Municipal Issue Collector!

 

Here are my double notgelden.

 

aachen, duren, coblenz OH MY!!!

 

Nice batch of Notgeld there strelets. :thumb:

 

Thanks, I have more than 400, it's a very interesting area in collecting!!!!!

 

very interesting time in history that brought them about.