Matrix for printing bills with a denomination of 25 pfennigs

Collectors' interest in substitute money led to the creation of companies that specialised in trading bills and German printing houses that produced bills to meet collectors' tastes rather than actual market needs. The years 1921–1922 were even called the period of serial bills (Serienscheine), after bills issued in series with identical designs, differing only in denominations, colours or telling subsequent fragments of the same story on individual copies. These bills almost never entered into actual circulation. They were printed only for trade purposes, and the profits went to the coffers of issuers and sellers. The municipality of Szczecin also got involved in collectors' production, although it officially printed replacement money to supply the market with small denominations due to the failure of the Reichsbank. However, the city authorities had to withdraw the bills after the decision of the Prussian Minister of Trade and Industry because they were issued without appropriate authorization. In total, in the years 1921–1922, Szczecin published four collector's series. The presented matrix was created in 1921 for printing the obverses of the third of them, the so-called port series, which on the reverse presented a panorama of Szczecin with transhipment facilities and a shipyard. In order to minimize costs, old plates were used, from which information about the date of issue and validity of the bill as well as warnings about the penalty for imitation were removed. The updated dates of January 1 and July 1, 1922, respectively, were added to the new bills using a different template. Covering the strip with information about the rules of purchase with another form of printing and waiving warnings about the penalization of imitations appear to be conscious actions of the municipality. In the event of another dispute with the government administration, it could have been proven that the bills were issued only for collection purposes. Mieszko Pawłowski