50 Pfennig

Herne's 1920 Pfennig notgeld emerged from the same post-WWI currency vacuum that forced hundreds of German municipalities to print their own emergency money. The Ruhr industrial towns were particularly active issuers — coal mining had kept them economically vital, but the national coinage shortage hit working-class wage towns hard. J. C. König & Ebhardt in Hannover were among the more technically capable regional printers handling these municipal contracts, and their work tends to show cleaner registration than the hasty output of smaller job printers pressed into notgeld production during the same period.

Collectors should note that Herne issues from this run were produced in relatively high quantities for local circulation and were not among the deliberately scarce "collector" notgeld cynically manufactured by some towns specifically for the philatelic trade.