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500 000 Marks
| Issuer | Stadtkasse Speyer (City of Speyer Notgeld, Bavaria) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 500 000 Marks (500 000) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Tan-toned note with ornate corner flourishes and a guilloche-patterned underprint bearing the numeral 500000. The city arms of Speyer appear as a watermark-style vignette at centre. The denomination in Gothic blackletter script dominates the upper field, with the issuing authority legend and date of 27 July 1923 in the text body below. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Fünfhunderttausend-Mark 500.000 „Er hält in den Händen das lohnende Geld Drauf glühen aus alter Zeit und Welt / Viel stolze Kaiserbilder.” |
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| Comments |
Speyer's municipal treasury issued this note at the absolute peak of German hyperinflation — by August 1923, half a million marks could barely cover a streetcar fare. Stadtkasse notgeld of this denomination existed because the Reichsbank simply could not produce and distribute currency fast enough to keep pace with the collapse; municipalities, utilities, and private firms all filled the void with emergency paper of wildly varying quality and legal standing.
Local printing at Speyer was common for this wave of notgeld, which is why paper quality and ink registration vary even within the same series. The Pfalz region issued an extraordinary volume of emergency notes during this period, most redeemed and pulped within weeks of issue.