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100 000 Mark overstamp on 500 Mark

Issuer Stadt Werdau (City of Werdau)
Year 1922
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Shape Rectangular
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Obverse description Printed in brown on the original 500 Mark base note, the obverse is enclosed within a multi-rule border with ornamental corner rosettes over a fine green guilloche underprint. A central oval cartouche bears the original denomination in Gothic blackletter script reading 'Fünfhundert Mark', overlaid diagonally by a bold black letterpress overstamp reading 'Hunderttausend Mark', with the revalued figure '100 000 Mark' additionally typeset in large bold Roman type at the upper and lower margins. The body text names the Städtische Sparkasse und Banken in Werdau as the paying institution, records the issue date of 22 September 1922, and carries two manuscript signatures above the printed titles 'Bürgermeister' and 'Vorsteher', flanking a small municipal seal.
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Protection type Watermark
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Comments

Werdau was a mid-sized Saxon textile town with no particular monetary history before the inflation emergency forced hundreds of German municipalities to issue their own provisional currency. This note belongs to the Notgeld phase of 1922–23, when municipal and commercial issuers across Germany were overprinting existing stock rather than waiting for new designs to be printed — the 500 Mark base note was already obsolescent the moment the 100,000 Mark overstamp was applied.

The overprinting practice creates authentication complications that still matter to collectors: the ink and registration quality of the overstamp varies considerably within a single issue run, and some examples show misaligned or partially struck figures that were nevertheless released into circulation without correction.

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