25 Pfennig, Stadt Boppard, 1920
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00399
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- AU (IBNS)
Light even toning across the sheet. 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
- $8 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 76.1 × 51.2 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicRhinelandFrench occupationTown view
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, Stadt Boppard, 1920
- Printer
- Kraemer & Barthe, Trier
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- The Binger Tor
- The reverse is a pencil-drawn tower above the road out of town, signed by the artist - loose and sketchy in a way very little Notgeld is.
- 1216
- The date on the arms: the year Boppard became an imperial free town, a status it lost to the Archbishops of Trier in 1312 and never recovered.
- Kraemer & Barthe, Trier
- Printed in the occupied Rhineland, by a house in the city that had taken the town's liberties away six centuries earlier.
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.
Boppard sits in the Rhine gorge, in territory under French occupation when this note was dated on the last day of 1920. The arms carry 1216, the year the town won its charter from the emperor.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Boppard, 1920 in the collection.
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