10 Pfennigs black serial number

Ballenstedt is a small town in the Harz foothills, then part of the Duchy of Anhalt, and this 10 Pfennig note belongs to the broader Notgeld wave of 1921 — a period when chronic small-coin shortages pushed even minor municipalities into emergency paper issuance. Louis Koch of Halberstadt was a regional commercial printer regularly contracted for Notgeld runs across the area, producing notes for multiple Harz-district communities in quick succession during these years.

The black serial numbering distinguishes this from related variants in the same series. Koch's Notgeld output for small Anhalt issuers rarely turns up in significant quantity today, as most circulated hard and were not preserved by contemporary collectors before the stabilization of late 1923.