1 Heller Silver pattern strike

Augsburg's status as a Free Imperial City gave its mint the right to strike coinage independently, but by the mid-eighteenth century that privilege was increasingly ceremonial. Pattern strikes like this one were rarely produced with circulation in mind — they served diplomatic, archival, or presentation purposes, and the decision to render a heller denomination in silver is itself an anomaly worth noting. The heller was the smallest unit of account; striking one in a precious metal was essentially a formal gesture.

Forster and Schmelzing's documentation of this piece as Pn45 places it within a narrow window of Augsburg municipal numismatic activity before the city's absorption into Bavaria in 1806.