1/2 Mark - Wilhelm II type 2 - small shield - Pattern

By 1915, Germany's silver coinage was under pressure — wartime metal demands would eventually strip subsidiary silver from circulation entirely, with the Reichsbank beginning to hoard silver as early as 1916. This piece appears to be a pattern struck in anticipation of design revisions that never reached full production, the small shield variant representing one of several competing solutions to standardizing the imperial coinage across the federated states. Whether it reached official approval or died in committee is unresolved, but surviving examples are vanishingly rare.