Augsburg's heller coinage of this period was essentially fiduciary token money — the intrinsic copper value was negligible, and the city issued these primarily to meet demand for the smallest transactions in a local economy that larger silver denominations couldn't service. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Free Imperial City's political autonomy was increasingly nominal, squeezed between Habsburg pressure and the practical realities of the Holy Roman Empire's terminal fragmentation. These small copper pieces kept circulating long after Augsburg lost its free city status in 1806, simply because nobody bothered to redeem them.
Augsburg's heller coinage of this period was essentially fiduciary token money — the intrinsic copper value was negligible, and the city issued these primarily to meet demand for the smallest transactions in a local economy that larger silver denominations couldn't service. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Free Imperial City's political autonomy was increasingly nominal, squeezed between Habsburg pressure and the practical realities of the Holy Roman Empire's terminal fragmentation. These small copper pieces kept circulating long after Augsburg lost its free city status in 1806, simply because nobody bothered to redeem them.