3 Pfennig

Mühlhausen's copper pfennig issues of 1621–22 fall squarely within the Kipper und Wipperzeit — the catastrophic currency debasement crisis that swept the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1620s. Municipal and territorial mints across Germany raced to produce low-value copper coinage while simultaneously clipping and sweating silver, destabilizing trade networks from Saxony to the Rhine. Mühlhausen, as a free imperial city with minting rights, was both a participant in and a victim of this spiral.

KM#16 is among the smaller denominations the city struck during this period, when even three pfennig in copper represented a meaningful transaction for ordinary commerce increasingly stripped of reliable silver.