3 Kreutzers Gothic shield

Lucerne struck these small silver pieces during a period when the Swiss Confederation's member cantons maintained jealously independent monetary systems, producing a patchwork of local denominations that frustrated merchants and money changers across the region. The kreuzer denominations were the workhorses of everyday commerce — market transactions, toll payments, minor guild fees — and survivors in any condition are scarcer than their original production volumes might suggest, simply because they circulated until they fell apart.

The absence from KM and Haas listings, despite Wielandt and HMZ attribution, points to a type that scholarship has not fully reconciled across the major reference works.