Austrian Notgeld, 1923

It's a notgeld, or German Austrian, too! (I never knew!) emergency money issued during WWI by cities, companies, etc because there were no coins (they all were sold for metal)

Someone here can give you where it's from and other details, but this is just my quick answer.

It's a "notgeld", an emergency note issued after World War I. Yours isn't actually German, it's Austrian, from the state of Oberösterreich, or Upper Austria. I have a very similar one.

German notgeld aren't listed in the regular banknote catalogues, because just about every city, town and village in Germany issued notes, often issuing hundreds of different types and varieties. But I believe these Austrian notes, because they were issued by a state government rather than a municipality, are actually listed in the Pick banknote catalogue. I'll check mine when I get home from work, if no-one else has in the meantime.

Notgeld normally aren't expensive; just a few dollars at most.

Now I'm home, I can see it's listed in the "specialized" volume of Pick (Volume 1) as PS# 120. It comes in four colour varieties (brown, violet, back and green - I assume this one is "brown"). There are also "errors", printed with the wrong design on the back.

The regular notes like yours are valued at 20¢ in my 1995 edition of the catalogue, the errors are valued at $45. Echizento's price is probably more current.

The fact regarding Notgeld is that the first run was out of sheer necessity; however, when it became apparent that people wanted to collect it, a lot of towns and cities released new stuff targeted specifically at collectors in order to garner money for their own coffers. This is why you have things like color varieties, or notes that are in a series of six or eight or twelve. "Thin construction paper" is not unusual; cheaper grade to start with, and the fact that it would be more prone to damage would have meant the possibility of repeat buying, thus lining the town coffers even better.