1 Scherf

Stendal, a Hanseatic town in the Brandenburg Marches, issued emergency copper pfennig-weight coinage in 1621 at the height of the Kipper- und Wipperzeit — the catastrophic currency debasement crisis that swept the Holy Roman Empire between roughly 1619 and 1623. Larger territorial mints were frantically reducing silver content to profit from arbitrage; smaller civic authorities responded by issuing token copper to fill the vacuum left by hoarded good silver. The Scherf was the lowest fractional denomination in the northern German system.