Denier Bracteate - John

John of Brunswick ruled jointly with his brother Albert from 1252, and the bracteate coinage of this period reflects the broader Lower Saxon tradition in which paper-thin silver pennies served as the dominant regional currency — a system that persisted in northern Germany long after double-sided coinage had reasserted itself elsewhere in Europe. The extreme fragility of bracteates made them poorly suited to extended circulation, which explains why surviving examples often retain sharper detail than their age suggests.