10 Pfennig

Eckartsberga is a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities in 1920, it issued its own emergency paper currency — Notgeld — to address the acute small-denomination coin shortage that followed WWI. The Reichsbank could not meet demand for low-value coinage, and local authorities filled the gap themselves. These issues were self-funded, self-designed, and legally tolerated rather than officially sanctioned.

Collectors should note that many Eckartsberga Notgeld pieces were printed in excess of local need and sold directly to the growing collector market — a practice that became widespread by 1921.