Rappen

Lucerne's copper rappen issues of the late eighteenth century belong to a period when Swiss cantonal minting was under growing pressure from Helvetic reformers pushing for monetary standardization across the Confederation. The city continued striking its own small copper independently, as it had for generations, though within two decades the political upheaval of 1798 and the imposition of the Helvetic Republic would effectively end cantonal coinage authority. This piece predates that rupture by exactly twenty-five years.