See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

50 Pfennigs

Issuer Stadt Crefeld (City of Krefeld)
Year 1917
Type Log in to see details
Value 50 Pfennigs (50 Pfennige) (0.50)
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description The reverse is printed entirely in golden-tan ink on a cream ground, with a dense repeating text underprint of 'PfennigeStadtCrefeld Fünfzig' running in horizontal rows across the full surface. At centre, a large vignette of the Crefeld municipal coat of arms — a quartered shield surmounted by a royal crown and set within elaborate scrollwork — is overprinted in the same warm tone. The denomination numeral '50' appears in guilloche-style cartouches flanking the shield, and the issuer name 'Stadt Crefeld' is inscribed in large Gothic script arching above the arms.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Repeating typographic underprint reading 'Crefeld Fünfzig Pfennige Stadt' printed across both faces in pale tan ink as a counterfeit deterrent.
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

Krefeld's 1917 municipal emergency money belongs to the first serious wave of German Kleingeldersatz — the substitution coinage crisis that hit in 1916–17 as metal hoarding stripped small change from everyday transactions. Cities, towns, utilities, and private firms were authorized to print their own fractional paper, and thousands did. Most Notgeld from this period was purely functional: printed locally on whatever press was available, with no particular ambition.

The underprint is the one concession to anti-counterfeiting — a low-cost measure widely adopted by issuing municipalities that lacked access to more sophisticated security printing.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE