10 Pfennig, Stadt Lyck, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00472
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
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.
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: 84.5 × 53 mm (±1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic East Prussia Masuria Plebiscite

The type

Type: 10 Pfennig, Stadt Lyck, 1920
Printer: Flemming-Wiskott A.-G., Glogau
Rarity: common

LyckGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

The same text twice: Both denominations print the plebiscite result in full. The set exists to commemorate, not to make change.
Two shields: A double portrait head on one and a cross on the other, flanking the numeral - the town arms of Lyck.
Ełk: The town has been Polish since 1945. The note is a monument to a vote whose result was undone by a war that had not yet happened when it was printed.

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.

Lyck called itself Masurens Hauptstadt, the capital of Masuria, and its 1920 notes exist to record a vote. On 11 July 1920 the Allies held a plebiscite across Masuria and Warmia: stay with East Prussia, or join Poland. The note states the local result on its face - in the town of Lyck, 8,339 voted for Germany and only 7 for Poland.

Lyck is Ełk in Poland today. Its German population left or was expelled in 1945, and the lake on the reverse is the same lake.

The ten carries the same declaration and the same lake, at a larger size.

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

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