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I do a little "freelance" work for the local coin shop, and the last batch of coins they gave me included over 40 German notgeld / kriegsgeld coins. They were dated 1917-1921, plus a few undated ones. I can attribute these, sort of... but is there anyone out there in RealCentLand that could help me know more about them? Especially important would be to understand the mind of a collector of this sort of thing, to know what they are looking for - what sort of information on each coin. I was thinking using the same basic format I use for attributing all coins: on the 2x2, the top left would be the geographic area, top right is the year, bottom left is the denomination, and the bottom right is for the asking price. But I've also noticed that there are similar coins that are in different compositions - as proven by my magnet! One coin sticks, and another that looks the same does not. So is that something that happens often enough that it would need to be part of the necessary attribution info?
And as for helping the shop out the most, the bottom line comes back to: how in the world do I come up with a legitimate and reliable pricing structure? This stuff is not in the Krause books... AND I've not had to grade this kind of stuff much before...

Anyone? Any thoughts?

Just for starters, kriegsgeld means war money. All the hard money was being borrowed/spent by the govt to fight WWI so local communities came up with their own fiat money to keep commerce going. Location would be very important to collectors I would think, kind of similar to National Banknotes in the US where people prefer to collect from cities they like or live in. Maybe your best bet would be getting on the German Ebay site and looking around. (Ebay.de)

Thanks. Anyone else? Reliable online sources of information? Anyone a collector of this stuff?

bump

You can get one on Amazon. I haven't been able to justify this purchase yet.
CATALOG OF GERMAN WAR TOKENS by Robert Lamb


Joelscoins has a listing of an old catalog of German Notgeld coins on the web with prices. Try here:
http://www.joelscoins.com/notgeld/notgeldger1.htm

Here are two links that may or may not help you:

Don's World Coin Gallery Notgeld Section

Joel's Coins archived Notgeld Catalog

If one variety comes in different metal compositions it seems worth mentioning.

I don't have much experience with these coins. I only own a few. I see common ones selling on eBay for $2-4 each after shipping, but don't know enough to know when they are rare.

Unfortunately it may be better for 'the bottom line' to sell them in bulk or small lots rather than spending the time and resources to attribute every single one.



-wheatiefan