2 Assis

Basel struck these billon assis during a period of acute monetary fragmentation across the Swiss Confederation, when individual cities routinely issued their own fiduciary coinage to plug gaps left by the chronic shortage of small-denomination silver. The billon content — debased silver alloyed heavily with copper — was a deliberate choice, not a degradation; it kept production economical while maintaining nominal credibility against the flood of foreign petty coinage circulating illegally in Basel's markets.

The fifteen-year production window spanning 1623–1638 brackets the worst years of the Thirty Years' War, during which Basel's position on the Rhine made it both a commercial conduit and a target for currency manipulation by surrounding belligerents.