Plappart Roman lettering, without rays

Basel's municipal coinage of the early sixteenth century was produced under a civic mint operating within the political turbulence of the Reformation, which would formally take hold in the city in 1529 when the cathedral canons fled and the Mass was abolished. The distinction between lettering styles — Roman versus Gothic — and the presence or absence of rays around the central device are the primary diagnostic criteria separating the closely related varieties catalogued under HMZ 2#66.

Die work on these small silver issues is notoriously inconsistent across the emission period.