3 Mark Nickel pattern strike : lettered edge

Lübeck was one of the last surviving city-states of the old Hanseatic tradition, and by 1915 it was minting under severe wartime metal constraints that pushed the German monetary system toward base-metal experiments. This piece is a pattern — never approved for circulation — produced as part of a broader Reich-wide effort to evaluate nickel as a substitute for the silver coinage being pulled from circulation to fund the war. The lettered edge variant of Schaaf 82/G2 distinguishes it from the plain-edge strikes of the same trial, indicating at least two parallel die or collar configurations were tested.