60 Pfennig, Stadt Altona, 1921
Notgeld der Stadt Altona
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00387
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- magistrate_1
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- magistrate_2
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
As issued: full body, square corners, bright unfaded ink and no fold through the design. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which shows folds, soiling and edge condition but not paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
- Estimated value
- $10 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 95 × 66.1 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicHolsteinHamburgShippingSerienschein
The type
- Type
- 60 Pfennig, Stadt Altona, 1921
- Printer
- H. W. Köbner & Co., Altona
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- The steamer
- A working ship, funnel smoking, drawn in red and black against green water. Altona lived on the Elbe and on the fish landed there.
- Two weeks' notice
- The reverse states the note dies two weeks after the call in the Altonaer Amtsblatt - an unusually short fuse.
- A sixty-Pfennig denomination
- No transaction needs sixty pfennig. Values like this are the reliable sign of a set printed for the album trade.
What was happening
Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation and towns printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough.
By 1920 it had become something else. The shortage was easing but the collector market was not, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made by places with a few thousand inhabitants, in the years when Germany's currency was dying.
Altona was a separate city until 1938, Danish until 1864, Prussian afterwards, and always Hamburg's neighbour and rival on the Elbe. Its December 1921 notes are about the river: a steamer at anchor on the sixty, the old fishing quarter on the eighty.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 60 Pfennig, Stadt Altona, 1921 in the collection.
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