50 Pfennig

Kappeln, a small herring-fishing town on the Schlei inlet in Schleswig-Holstein, issued this Notgeld note amid the nationwide small-change shortage that followed the First World War. Coin hoarding had made low-denomination currency nearly impossible to find in ordinary commerce, forcing hundreds of German municipalities — many far smaller than Kappeln — to print their own emergency fractional paper in 1919 and 1920.

Collectors should be aware that many Kappeln Notgeld pieces were printed in deliberate surplus for the philatelic trade, a practice common by 1921. Notes from the 1920 series are generally considered genuine circulation issues, but the line between circulated stock and dealer-run print runs is not always clean.