Maille - Philip I of Alsace Arras mint

Philip of Alsace ruled Flanders at the height of its commercial power, and Arras was one of the county's principal minting centers precisely because it sat at the intersection of trade routes feeding the great cloth fairs. These fractional silver pieces — mailles, half-deniers by function — circulated in enormous volumes through market transactions too small for the denier. The Ghyssens references 160 and 161 distinguish minor die variants rather than fundamentally different issues, a distinction that matters primarily to type collectors working this series.