50 Pfennig, Stadt Dresden, 1921
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00408
- Serial
- Reihe C 15405
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- council
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- VF (IBNS)
Circulated: overall soiling, rounded corners and a wavy sheet. 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
- $3 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 81.6 × 51.7 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicSaxonyMunicipal finance
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Dresden, 1921
- Printer
- Johannes Pässler, Dresden-N.
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Reihe C
- Print runs lettered rather than a picture series. A city of six hundred thousand reprinted continuously and needed to tell the runs apart.
- A seated figure
- The reverse carries a single brooding nude in an oval - a striking thing to find on municipal small change, and more Dresden than anything else about the note.
- Johannes Pässler, Dresden-N.
- Printed locally, in a city with one of the best printing trades in Germany.
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.
Dresden's February 1921 issue is a city's working paper rather than a collectors' set: lettered by print run - this is Reihe C - numbered, and valid only to 30 September 1921 unless the council extended it through the Dresdner Anzeiger.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Dresden, 1921 in the collection.
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