3 Flitter - Frederick Ulrich Kipper

Issued at the height of the Kipper- und Wipperzeit — the catastrophic currency debasement crisis that swept the Holy Roman Empire between roughly 1619 and 1623 — this piece is a product of deliberate monetary fraud on a systemic scale. Princes, cities, and ecclesiastical authorities raced to mint debased coin, collect good silver in exchange, and export the crisis to neighbors. Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel under Frederick Ulrich was no innocent bystander; the duchy operated multiple emergency mints during this period specifically to exploit the chaos.

The copper content tells the full story. By 1621 the fiction of silver content had largely collapsed.