1 Heller

Augsburg's heller coinage of this period occupied the lowest tier of the Holy Roman Empire's chaotic small-change ecosystem, where municipal copper issues circulated alongside a bewildering variety of other city-state pfennigs and hellers with no guaranteed acceptance beyond local markets. Free imperial cities like Augsburg retained the right to strike their own copper under imperial privilege, a right jealously defended even as the economic rationale for fractional copper grew increasingly thin through the early eighteenth century.

KM#128 spans a production window of roughly 25 years, suggesting intermittent rather than continuous striking — typical of municipal copper issued to address short-term small-change shortages rather than satisfy ongoing demand.