1 Pfennig with eagle

Goslar's pfennig coinage from this period reflects the city's unusual status as an Imperial Free City sitting directly atop the Rammelsberg mine, one of medieval Europe's most productive sources of silver ore. The city had effectively been minting on its own account for centuries, drawing on ore extracted just outside its walls. That proximity to raw material gave Goslar a degree of monetary independence that most cities of comparable size simply never enjoyed.

The bracteate-influenced thinness of these issues made them fragile in circulation, and survivors without cracks or edge splits are genuinely uncommon.