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1 Pfennig

Issuer Rietberg, City of
Year 1639
Type Standard circulation coin
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Obverse lettering STADT. RIDTB
Reverse description Central field bears the numeral I denoting the denomination of one Pfennig, flanked on either side by portions of the date 1639, with the digits disposed around the central numeral. The legend ANNO appears around the field, referencing the year of issue. The entire design is enclosed within a beaded or rope inner border, characteristic of hammered municipal copper coinage of the period.
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Additional information

Rietberg was a small County in Westphalia, and its local copper pfennig issues of the 1630s exist precisely because the Thirty Years' War had catastrophically disrupted the supply of reliable small change across the German states. Municipal and territorial authorities struck emergency copper pieces to fill the void left by hoarded silver and the collapse of normal mintage infrastructure. Rietberg's issues from this period are genuine small-denomination necessities, not prestige coinage.

The County changed hands through inheritance disputes repeatedly across the seventeenth century, complicating attribution of specific issues to particular counts.

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