25 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921

This copy

Accession

OM-00447

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.

magistrate_3

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

magistrate_4

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

magistrate_5

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

Grade

AU (IBNS)

Bright; light edge toning. 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

54.6 × 70.9 mm (±0.5, from the scan)

Themes

NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicLippeMunicipal finance

The type

Type

25 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921

Printer

Messmann, Lage

Rarity

common

Symbology

A portrait-format note

Printed on the short axis, so the denomination sits in an octagon in the middle with the legal text beneath. Very few Notgeld notes are laid out this way.

Five signatures

Sauerländer, Beermann, Niehaus and two more, all in ink. A town of this size could still authenticate its money by hand.

Messmann, Lage

Printed in the town itself, which is why this one looks like local jobbing work rather than a Leipzig art print.

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.

Lage is a small town in the principality of Lippe, which survived as a sovereign state until 1918 and as a Land until 1947. Its February 1921 notes are upright rather than landscape - taller than they are wide, which is unusual - and are signed by five men of the magistracy.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921 in the collection.