1 Pfennig

Nuremberg's pfennig coinage in this period was authorized under the city's ancient imperial mint privilege, one of the few such rights still exercised by a free city in the fragmented monetary landscape of the late Holy Roman Empire. By the 1750s the city's finances were under serious strain — Nuremberg carried debts accumulated over generations of costly imperial politics — and these tiny silver pieces circulated alongside a chaotic mixture of territorial coinages that made everyday commerce a persistent arithmetic problem.

The city lost its independent status entirely in 1806 when Napoleon dissolved the Empire and Bavaria absorbed Nuremberg outright.