10 Pfennig Kreis Plön

Kreis Plön is a rural district in Holstein, and its 1918 Kleingeldersatz issue belongs to the vast wave of municipal and district-level emergency money that flooded Germany as coin metal was diverted to the war effort. The Reichsbank had no practical mechanism to supply small change to every rural Landkreis, so local authorities printed their own. Selmar Bayer in Berlin was a commercial printer — not a specialist security firm — and handled a number of these small district commissions during the same period.

The Kreisausschuss, the district committee, held administrative rather than banking authority. That an administrative body rather than a savings bank or municipality served as issuer is worth noting for classification purposes.