10 Pfennig J. Bollow

J. Bollow was a Hamburg-based merchant or tradesman who issued this private emergency note — a Notgeld in function if not always in name — to substitute for the small coinage that routinely vanished from circulation during periods of monetary stress. These merchant-issued scrips were legally tolerated in Germany at various points precisely because official low-denomination coin supply repeatedly failed to meet everyday transactional demand. At 33 × 23 mm, this is among the smallest paper instruments a private issuer would bother producing. No state printer was involved; these were typically produced locally, often by the issuer's own stationer.