1/2 Groat - John III Shield type, Brussels

John III became Duke of Brabant in 1312 and ruled until 1355, one of the longer and more stable ducal reigns of the period. The shield-type half groat issued from Brussels falls within his early minting activity, before the monetary disruptions that followed Edward III's wool staple negotiations and the Low Countries' deep entanglement in the opening financial maneuvers of the Hundred Years' War. Brussels was not yet the dominant mint it would later become — Leuven and Antwerp competed actively for ducal minting rights throughout this period.

Witte 310 places this squarely among the earlier shield-type issues before John's later groat reforms of the 1330s.