6 Pfennigs - Joanna Elisabeth and Frederick Augustus

Anhalt-Zerbst is remembered today almost exclusively because its princess, Sophie Auguste Friederike, left the territory in 1745 to become — eventually — Catherine the Great of Russia. Frederick Augustus ruled this minor Ascanian principality jointly with his mother Joanna Elisabeth, a dynastic arrangement that produced a short run of joint-issue coinage in the late 1740s. The principality was dissolved entirely in 1793 when the male line died out, absorbed piecemeal by neighboring Anhalt territories.

Billon issues from small German principalities of this period circulated heavily and survive in worn condition far more often than not.