12 Pfennig

Rheine, a small Westphalian town on the Ems, issued emergency copper coinage in the early seventeenth century largely because the regional silver supply for small denominations had collapsed under the pressures of the Eighty Years' War and the broader monetary chaos gripping the Holy Roman Empire. The 12 Pfennig denomination in copper was an unusual choice — copper pfennig issues from minor civic authorities were rarely sanctioned at this face value, and the Weing Westfalens reference #241 documents it as a scarce survivor of what was an inherently short-lived local necessity coinage.