1⁄32 Ducat

Nuremberg's fractional ducat series pushed goldsmith technique to its practical limit. At 4.5 mm, these pieces required the city's die-cutters to work at a scale where the slightest variation in the blank's thickness made the difference between a struck coin and a cracked flan. The free imperial city maintained its minting rights jealously into the eighteenth century, long after smaller polities had surrendered theirs to territorial princes — which is precisely why issues like this one exist at all.