Pfennig 'Vierzipfliger'

The "Vierzipfliger" — literally "four-pointed" — takes its name from the distinctive clipping shape produced when dies were struck onto irregularly trimmed flans, a minting shortcut common to the small bracteate-influenced pfennigs circulating in the Upper Rhine region during the first half of the fourteenth century. Habsburg-Laufenburg was a cadet branch of the main Habsburg line, controlling territories around the confluence of the Rhine near present-day Laufenburg, and issued autonomous coinage only during a narrow window before absorption into the dominant Austrian holdings accelerated through the mid-1300s.