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500 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Castrop (City of Castrop) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | 1923 |
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| Obverse description | Typographically printed Notgeld note in black on a rust-red floral underprint covering the entire field with a dense foliate and daisy guilloche pattern. The denomination '500 Millionen Mark' is set in large bold black letterpress type at centre, above two lines of text identifying the issuing municipal treasury. A serial number appears at lower left, with two manuscript signatures at lower right under the heading 'Der Magistrat'; horizontal rust-red border bands frame the top and bottom edges, the lower band carrying the redemption and validity clause in italic script. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse shows the obverse design printed in light grey through the thin paper stock, appearing as a faint mirror image of the obverse text and floral underprint with no independently printed reverse design, consistent with single-sided typographic emergency currency production of the 1923 German hyperinflation period. |
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| Comments |
Castrop was an industrial Ruhr coal town, and like dozens of similar municipalities in 1923, it was authorized to issue its own emergency currency — Notgeld — when hyperinflation made Reichsbank supply chronically inadequate. By the time this 500-million-mark note was printed, the denomination was already functionally modest; the Papiermark had deteriorated so badly that a single US dollar was worth hundreds of millions by late summer 1923.
Local printing on locally sourced paper was the norm at this scale of issue, which means paper quality and ink registration vary considerably between sheets — not a defect, just the reality of municipal emergency production.