10 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921

This copy

Accession

OM-00448

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.

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

58.5 × 75.9 mm (±1.6, from the scan)

Themes

NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicLippeMunicipal finance

The type

Type

10 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921

Printer

Messmann, Lage

Rarity

common

Symbology

Vertical text panels

The legal wording is set in columns running up the note rather than across it - a layout borrowed from a printer's habits rather than from money.

Grey and yellow

Two flat colours over a printed ground. Lippe was among the poorest of the German states and its towns' money looks it.

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.

The ten is the companion to the twenty-five, from the same month and the same press, and laid out the same way: upright, with the text running in vertical panels either side.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Pfennig, Stadt Lage in Lippe, 1921 in the collection.