1 Rappen

Lucerne struck its own copper coinage in the early 1800s as a cantonal authority, a practice that ended definitively with Swiss federal monetary unification in 1850. This piece predates that consolidation by nearly half a century, issued when Switzerland was still a loose confederation of sovereign cantons each managing their own monetary affairs — a situation the Act of Mediation of 1803, imposed by Napoleon, had only partially rationalized.