Germans Still Holding on to Deutsche Marks

Almost three years after the introduction of the euro, German citizens still seem to have large hoards of Deutsche Marks, their old currency. Branches of the German Federal Bank or Bundesbank still record between 50 and 100 Deutsche Mark payments a day, a spokesman for the bank in Hamburg said. He added that Hamburg alone recorded exchanges of around 50,000 Deutsche Marks in the new currency daily. According to Johannes Korz, spokesman for the Bundesbank, around 8.1 billion Deutsche Marks (€4.1 billion) in notes as well as coins worth €7.3 billion Deutsche Marks were circulating by the end of August 2004. The Bundesbank in Hamburg said that the bank counted more than 3,000 customers in the month of August alone who exchanged around 1.5 million Deutsche Marks. The Bundesbank allows German citizens who still have Deutsche Marks at home to exchange these for free into euros at their branches throughout Germany.