1/2 Stiver - Philip the Handsome, Regency

Philip the Handsome was four years old in 1485, making Holland's coinage during this period the product of regency councils acting in his name following the death of Mary of Burgundy in 1482. The billon coinage of this transitional period reflects the monetary instability that followed — the silver content of small denomination struck in the Low Countries had been declining steadily for decades, and the regency administrators had neither the political authority nor the economic leverage to reverse it.