The euro cash changeover was 20 years ago. Nevertheless, citizens continue to go to the Bundesbank with D-Mark bills and coins and exchange them for euros. On average, it’s several hundred Deutschmarks.
Magdeburg/Frankfurt/Main (dpa/sa) – In the only Bundesbank branch in Saxony-Anhalt in Magdeburg, citizens continue to exchange remaining D-Marks for euros. By the end of November this year, bills and coins worth 265,717.78 Deutschmarks had been exchanged, according to the Bundesbank headquarters in Bremen, Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. That was more than in the entire previous year, when customers brought in a total of 247,657.44 Deutschmarks. In the whole of 2020 it was 410,753.33 Deutschmarks.
The Magdeburg branch registered a total of 650 barter transactions by the end of November this year, or three per business day. In the previous year there were two per business day. The amount that people brought with them for each exchange fell: in 2021 it was an average of 439.11, now 408.80 Deutschmarks.
In neighboring Lower Saxony, the sums of D-Marks exchanged are far higher, and there are also more exchanges. In Göttingen, for example, 1,024 barter transactions totaling around 764,900 Deutschmarks were made this year. With an average of around 747 Deutschmarks per exchange, almost twice as much went over the bank counter as in Magdeburg. In Hanover, the average amount was over 980 euros. All in all, the Bundesbank branch in the capital of Lower Saxony received 2.654 million Deutschmarks – about ten times as much as in Magdeburg.
On January 1, 2002, euro cash replaced the national currency. Nevertheless, consumers keep discovering old D-Mark holdings, whether during spring cleaning, sorting out old clothes, clearing out or cleaning up when moving house or after the death of relatives.
Unlike the central banks in many other euro countries, the Bundesbank exchanges old notes and coins for an unlimited period. The exchange rate set for the changeover to the euro remains unchanged: you get one euro for 1.95583 Deutschmarks. The Bundesbank assumes that 12.30 billion German marks will still be outstanding at the end of November. But that is not even a twentieth of the circulation in the days of the Deutsche Mark.
