10 Pfennig

Grabow an der Elde, a small market town on the Elde river in Mecklenburg, issued this note as part of the Kleingeldersatz wave that swept German municipalities in the early 1920s. The national coinage shortage — caused by wartime hoarding and the collapse of the imperial monetary system — forced thousands of local governments to print their own fractional substitutes. By 1921 the practice was so widespread that many towns were issuing purely for the collector trade rather than genuine payment needs, a fact the Reichsbank found increasingly irritating.