3 Pfennig

Haltern was a small market town in Westphalia whose civic coinage rights were exercised only briefly and under pressing local need. This 1624 copper issue appeared during the early decades of the Thirty Years' War, when disrupted trade routes and hoarding had drained the region of reliable small change. Municipal authorities across the Holy Roman Empire stepped into that vacuum, producing low-denomination emergency coinages to keep local markets functioning. At 0.66 grams, this piece was barely worth striking — which is precisely why so few were made with any care for longevity.