50 000 000 Mark

Duisburg's municipal notgeld issues of 1923 belong to the most chaotic phase of the hyperinflation — the period between the Ruhr occupation in January and the Rentenmark stabilization in November, when the Reichsbank's own printing capacity was overwhelmed and hundreds of cities, towns, and private firms were authorized to issue emergency currency. A 50-million-mark denomination would have been unremarkable by August of that year; by late October, it was barely worth a tram fare.

Municipal issues from the industrial Ruhr were sometimes deliberately delayed in payment by local authorities, who benefited from the time-value gap between printing and redemption — a quiet form of institutional arbitrage that briefly sustained city finances while destroying everyone else's.