10 Heller, Marktgemeinde Telfs, 1920
Kassenschein der Marktgemeinde Telfs
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00274
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- deputy_mayor
- Schweigl uncertain
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- treasurer
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- Grade
- AU (IBNS)
Bright and unfolded. An earlier owner has pencilled '2 x 10 = 20' in the lower margin of the face, which is why this is not graded as issued. About uncurrent: bright and unfolded, with light handling - a corner bump or a faint edge tone. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which cannot show paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
- Estimated value
- $5 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 38.1 × 46.7 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyTyrolWoodcut designLocal designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 10 Heller, Marktgemeinde Telfs, 1920
- Printer
- Wagner, Innsbruck
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Kassenschein der Marktgemeinde Telfs. Giltig bis 31. I. 1921. Buergermeister. Vizebuergermeister. Kassier.
Treasury note of the market town of Telfs. Valid until 31 January 1921. Mayor. Deputy mayor. Treasurer.
Symbology
- The octagon and the figure 10
- The denomination fills the whole face, set in an octagonal frame against olive foliage and red hatching. On a note this small there is room for a number or a picture, and Telfs chose the number.
- Red and white
- The hatched blocks inside the octagon are red on cream. Red-white-red is the Austrian flag, and on money issued by a republic two years old it is doing deliberate work.
- Hand-cut carnations
- The reverse sets its legal text over a field of stylised carnations cut in olive. The carnation is a standing motif of Tyrolean folk decoration, on furniture and painted chests long before it reached a banknote.
- Three hand signatures
- Mayor, deputy mayor and treasurer, all signed in ink. The issue was small enough for all three to work through the whole run.
- 2 x 10 = 20
- Pencilled in the margin by an earlier owner and left there. It is not part of the note, and it is the only trace on any of these notes of somebody actually counting with them.
What was happening
Austria in 1919 was a republic of six and a half million people left holding the currency of an empire of fifty. The Austro-Hungarian Bank was in liquidation, the peace treaties had cut the country off from most of its coal and much of its food, and small coin simply vanished: hoarded against worse to come, melted for the metal, or carried across the new frontiers where it bought more. Shops could not give change, and a country that cannot give change cannot trade.
So the communes printed their own. A council resolution, a local printer, a redemption date and the pledge of the commune's entire movable and immovable property - that was the whole legal apparatus behind several thousand separate issues of Heller notes between 1919 and 1921. Vienna tolerated it while it solved a real problem and moved to stop it in 1920, by which time the notes had found a second market: collectors would pay more than face value for a complete set, so a village could raise real money by printing money it hoped would never be presented. The artwork improved as the need receded.
Telfs is a market town in the Tyrolean Oberinntal, west of Innsbruck, and its note runs later than most: valid until 31 January 1921, by which time Vienna had been trying to stop communal issues for the better part of a year.
It is also the smallest and plainest object in this group - a portrait-format slip barely larger than a postage stamp, printed by Wagner of Innsbruck, who printed Fieberbrunn's set too. One face is a single enormous 10 inside an octagon, over an olive silhouette; the other is the legal text, the redemption date and three signatures, over the same silhouette in a field of hand-cut carnations. Somebody has pencilled 2 x 10 = 20 in the margin, which is either a shopkeeper's arithmetic or a collector's.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Heller, Marktgemeinde Telfs, 1920 in the collection.
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