Denier Bracteate

Bracteates of this weight class were struck on flans so thin that a single die — applied to one face only — pushed the design through to create a mirror impression on the reverse. The technique was common across the German territories from the mid-twelfth century onward, but by the 1270s many regional mints were already transitioning back to double-sided coinage under pressure from Italian trading networks that found the fragile, single-sided pieces difficult to handle in bulk mercantile transactions.