50 Pfennigs

Recklinghausen's 1921 notgeld issue belongs to the second wave of municipal emergency currency — by this point the Weimar government had repeatedly extended permission for local authorities to print small-denomination scrip to ease the chronic coin shortage that had persisted since the war. The Ruhr cities in particular leaned heavily on these issues, as the industrial workforce needed low-denomination currency for daily transactions that the national mint simply couldn't supply fast enough.

The watermarked paper is worth noting: many notgeld issues of this period used plain stock, so its presence here suggests the city contracted a more serious commercial printer rather than relying on a local job shop.