Catalog
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| Issuer | Beetzendorf, Municipality of |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Notgeld voucher printed in black on pale green guilloche underprint, with a dotted border framing the entire note. The municipality name 'BEETZENDORF' appears in bold letterpress at the top, below which a central vignette shows a stylised gate or town building facade flanked on either side by large bold denomination numerals '50'. Two manuscript signatures of municipal officials appear at the lower portion of the note. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is unprinted, presenting as plain white paper through which the obverse letterpress impression is visible as a ghost image, a common characteristic of thin emergency currency paper stock of the period. |
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| Comments |
Beetzendorf is a small market town in the Altmark region of Saxony-Anhalt, and this 50 Pfennig note belongs to the vast wave of German municipal Notgeld produced between 1920 and 1922. By 1921 the phenomenon had shifted from genuine emergency currency — filling the coin shortage — into a semi-commercial collectibles trade, with municipalities issuing elaborate series knowing full well that philatelists and collectors would absorb most of the print run without ever spending a pfennig.
Whether Beetzendorf issued this purely for local circulation or with one eye on the collector market is not documented, but the timing places it squarely in that ambiguous zone.