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1 Scherf

Issuer Erfurt, City of
Year 1500
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Currency Thaler
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Obverse description A six-spoked wheel displayed in the center of the coin field, rendered in low relief against a plain field, enclosed within a raised beaded or plain border. The wheel, a well-known civic emblem of Erfurt, is depicted with spokes radiating symmetrically from a central hub, characteristic of the simple iconographic style typical of late medieval German Pfennig-type coinage.
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Edge Plain
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Additional information

Erfurt in 1500 sat in a peculiar administrative position — nominally under the Archbishop of Mainz yet functionally autonomous enough to strike its own municipal coinage. The Scherf, a half-pfennig denomination, occupied the absolute bottom of the local monetary hierarchy and would have passed through hands too poor to leave written records of their transactions.

At 0.18 g, the silver content borders on nominal. These were struck by the thousands and survived by almost none.