Lm.799 - 25pf & 1m

Many notgeld (emergency money) pieces appear to come from sets. The 2 notes above are from a set of 6 notes, issued in Luebeck by 'Bund der Hotel - Restaurant - and Cafe-Angelstellten Deutschlands'. These sets can be made up of many different combinations, but usually consist of a basic set of 3 notes with different values, eg) 25pf, 50pf & 75pf or may contain 6 notes of the same value eg) 50pf, but with each note having a different design. Usually the front of such notes is similar and the backs may depict different scenes, buildings, people etc.etc. These sets or series are usually very colourful and are almost all in uncirculated condition. Most were issued to meet a demand in the collector market that had grown from the initial issues, 6 to 7 years earlier. See the extremely colourful set from Gangelt (this link is in the left menu), as a good example!) The 2 main catalogues available to collectors of notes in this field are by Kai LINDMAN and the other by Manfred MEHL. Several series were issued in 'presentation envelopes,' which in time, collectors will probably come across. Dr. Arnold Keller, the famous notgeld collector and writer of notgeld catalogues, was reported to have said that these were a 'complete nonsense'. Today, they give the notgeld collector yet another dimension to collecting. Add to that, the different account numbers and their variants, 'overprints,' colour variations and details such as the name of the printer either appearing or not appearing on the notes, then the collector really does need to decide at an early stage what he is actually going to collect. Many collectors go for the main sets and just keep any variants as and when they see them. I always think it is nice to have a mixture of notes.

Click here to see scarcer series/sets!

Reutergeld

Some collectors will have notes that have the word Reutergeld printed on them. These are a subset of the serienscheine catagory. The following 70 towns produced Reutergeld, to honour the poet Fritz Reuter, who died in 1874. As Reuter had been born in the state (Stavenhagen, 1810) his fame in the area would presumably make the set of notgeld quite popular. They are located around the state of Mecklenburg. Each set consists of 3 notes of values 10pf, 25pf & 50pf. Thus a complete 'set' consists of 210 different notes. However, there are slight colour variations in printing and paper, so each set should truely be seen as 6. All are fairly readily available. (Sometimes the difference between the similar pieces are best seen under a light. One set appears 'matt'). The note below, depicts Fritz Reuter, but is not part of the 'Reutergeld' set: