500 Mark

Worms was among hundreds of German municipalities forced into emergency currency production as hyperinflation demolished the Reichsmark's purchasing power in the early 1920s. This Notgeld issue — city-administered, locally printed, valid only within the issuing municipality's jurisdiction — was a stopgap against the chronic small-denomination coin shortage that preceded the full hyperinflationary collapse of 1923.

The embossed seal was the city's primary authentication mechanism, a low-tech solution that nonetheless deterred casual counterfeiting at a time when official oversight was essentially nonexistent. By mid-1923, 500 Mark would buy almost nothing.