Hanse ECU Hamburg

The Hanse ECU series was issued by several German city-states in the early 1990s as a quasi-commemorative gesture toward European monetary integration — the ECU being the precursor unit to the euro. Hamburg's entry references its centuries-long role as a dominant Hanseatic trading port, a league whose commercial reach once stretched from London to Novgorod. These are not legal tender issues in the conventional sense; they occupy an awkward category between medal and coin that German collectors have never quite resolved.