Bern's 1839 centime is an oddity of Swiss cantonal monetary practice: the silver-plated copper construction here is not a degraded example but the intended specification, with a single silver dot struck into each face as a deliberate assay marker or quality indicator — a feature catalogued under HMZ 1#2-241b and almost never encountered on mainstream cantonal issues of the period.
Bern's 1839 centime is an oddity of Swiss cantonal monetary practice: the silver-plated copper construction here is not a degraded example but the intended specification, with a single silver dot struck into each face as a deliberate assay marker or quality indicator — a feature catalogued under HMZ 1#2-241b and almost never encountered on mainstream cantonal issues of the period.