100 000 000 Mark

Elberfeld was a textile and industrial hub in the Wupper valley, administratively merged into the new city of Wuppertal in 1929 — so this note was issued by a municipal authority that no longer existed within a decade of printing it. Like hundreds of German cities and towns in 1923, Elberfeld issued its own Notgeld because the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. By August of that year, 100 million Mark was roughly the cost of a loaf of bread, and that figure was itself outdated within days.

Samuel Lucas was a long-established Elberfeld printer, which made local production the practical choice — shipping currency from distant printers introduced delays that hyperinflation rendered catastrophic.