3 Pfennige - Günther Frederick Charles II

Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was among the smallest of the German states — a principality of under 50,000 subjects whose coinage survived purely by convention and the terms of the German monetary unions of 1838 and 1857. Günther Frederick Charles II ruled for over six decades, making him one of the longest-reigning German princes of the nineteenth century, and this copper pfennig issue spans nearly the entire arc of his reign's final quarter.

The Dresden Convention of 1838 had standardized minor coinage across the member states, which is why this issue exists at all — political pressure to harmonize low denominations produced a wave of copper striking among principalities that might otherwise have abandoned the effort.