what is a Spiel Geld?

1957joe

I have a coin about 1/2 the size of a dime that has 1 Speil geld on it. The literal translation is play money! Can anybody tell me more about it?

Shipcoin

As far as I know the Germans used such "money" for some games as playing -cards and so on... So it was like a token in contemporary casino or something like that. I also have one of these with the owl at one side...

oldshep

I have one too - a woman kneeling with a plant and on the other side the number 50 with the word "spielgeld"
Very interesting that there must be a lot of these floating around the world!
Shep

1957joe

oldshep- that one sounds a lot like the regular issue 50 pfennig coin. Wouldn't that be confusing as h_ll?

oldshep

Joe -I don't think this is a real coin as it is very thin and a little bit concave on the bottom - the word on the back is, for sure, spielgeld - the plant the woman is holding is the one I have seen on the actual German coins but this one is obviously a token or something other than a real coin.
Shep

lordmarcovan

Speaking of speilgeld that imitated the new postwar coinage, I just found a spielgeld piece that was an imitation of a 1949 10-pfennig! It's tiny, though- whereas the real coin would be about the diameter of a US nickel, this one is the size of an aspirin tablet.

Askari

Spielgeld is literally "play money" and was made for just that purpose. They are collectable.