Denier Bracteate - Gottfried III

The counts of Helfenstein occupied a precarious position in mid-thirteenth century Swabia, their authority contested between the competing interests of the Hohenstaufen imperial line — then in terminal collapse after Conrad IV's death in 1254 — and the rising power of the Habsburgs moving into the regional vacuum. Bracteate coinage of this type was inherently local in function, circulating within tight geographic boundaries rather than serving any broader exchange network.

At under half a gram, the physical fragility of these thin single-sided strikes means genuinely intact examples are rare. The Berger corpus remains the definitive reference for Swabian bracteates of this period.