10 Pfennig, Markt Berchtesgaden, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00397
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
mayor: 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: 91.1 × 52.2 mm (±0.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Bavaria Salt mining Alpine

The type

Type: 10 Pfennig, Markt Berchtesgaden, 1920
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

BerchtesgadenGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Glück auf: The miners' greeting, on a scroll beneath a miner standing inside a great letter A. Crossed hammers and the Bavarian lozenges flank him.
Der arme Nickel: "The poor Nickel." Nickel is both the coinage metal that had vanished and a miners' word for a troublesome sprite - the same root that gave the element its name. The pun is the whole joke.
Edelweiss: Two of them frame the denomination on the face. Berchtesgaden was already selling itself to walkers.

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.

Berchtesgaden lived on salt. The mine under the Salzberg had been worked since 1517 and was the reason the place existed, and the note says so in a couplet: trüg unser reicher Salzberg ein Erz in seiner Erden, müßt nicht der arme Nickel jetzt auch papieren werden - if our rich salt mountain bore an ore in its earth, poor Nickel would not have to turn to paper too.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Pfennig, Markt Berchtesgaden, 1920 in the collection.

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