Duit

Overijssel was among the more financially strained of the Seven Provinces, and its copper duit coinage reflects the patchwork monetary reality of the Dutch Republic — each province maintained the legal right to strike its own small change, producing chronic regional inconsistencies in weight and fineness that the States General repeatedly failed to standardize. The Overijssel duit circulated primarily in the eastern Netherlands and across the border into Westphalia, where Dutch copper was accepted by custom rather than by law.

The nearly three-decade production window here partly reflects VOC demand; the Company absorbed enormous quantities of duits as trade currency in the East Indies, where they circulated by weight rather than by denomination.