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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Hamm (City of Hamm, Westphalia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Dieses Notgeld verliert seine Gültigkeit 1 Monat nach erfolgter öffentl. Bekanntmachung Hamm (Westf.) d. 18. Mai 1920 Der Magistrat: Oberbürgermeister Bürgermeister No 002015 |
| Reverse description | Yellow, grey, and brown note with a bold decorative border incorporating four corner roundels each bearing the cursive numeral '50' in rust-red. A central cartouche encloses a detailed letterpress vignette of the Altes Oberlandesgericht (Old Court of Appeal) building in Hamm, captioned below; above the vignette, an inscription commemorates the 100-year jubilee with the dates 4. Juli 1820 and 4. Juli 1920. The legend 'Gutschein d. Stadt' appears at the top and 'Hamm i. Westf.' at the bottom of the border. |
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| Comments |
Hamm's 1920 Notgeld issue belongs to the first major wave of municipal emergency currency that flooded Westphalia after the Reichsbank tightened coin circulation during the postwar metal shortage. Cities printed their own fractional notes not out of bureaucratic ambition but because workers couldn't make change — wages were being paid, but markets couldn't function without small denominations.
Printed locally, which kept costs down but introduced inconsistencies in ink saturation that collectors now use to distinguish genuine issues from the souvenir reprints produced shortly after for the collector trade — a problem endemic to Westphalian Notgeld of this period.