Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
5 000 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtrat Karlsruhe (City Council of Karlsruhe) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | KARLSRUHE 5 Milliarden RONDELLPLATZ 1853 |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Embossed stamp |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Karlsruhe's city council, like hundreds of German municipal authorities in late 1923, was forced into the absurd position of issuing its own billion-mark emergency currency simply to meet payroll. The five-billion-mark denomination places this note in the final weeks of the hyperinflation peak — by November 1923, the Reichsbank's own notes were struggling to keep pace with daily price movements, and notgeld of this magnitude was already becoming obsolete before the ink dried.
The embossed stamp was a practical anti-counterfeiting measure at a time when the cost of sophisticated intaglio security made little economic sense — the note's face value would halve within days regardless.