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Message:: [QUOTE="Orielensis, post: 7873424, member: 96898"]I finally found time this weekend to take pictures of this recent purchase. Stralsund, located at the Baltic shore in northeastern Germany, was an important member of the Hanseatic League in the later Middle Ages. Its coat of arms, the arrowhead shown on the obverse of my coin, is a pun on the city's name. The Middle Low German word strale means "arrow." It shares an etymology with, for example, the Old English lexeme strǣl, its now archaic English descendant streal, Middle High German strâle, New High German Strahl, and Polish strzała. The six-rayed star on the reverse of my coin is the emblem of the Wendish monetary union, a group of northern German Hanseatic cities that from 1379 on struck coins to the same weight standard. The cities Lübeck, Hamburg, Wismar and Lüneburg were the core members of this monetary union, which lasted until 1569. Stralsund, Rostock, and Hannover joined it for shorter periods of time. The witten, a silver coin worth four pfennige of the Lübeck weight standard, constituted the typical denomination of the early Wendish monetary union. [ATTACH=full]1356760[/ATTACH]Stralsund, Hanseatic City, AR witten, before 1381 AD: Obv: *MONETA:SVNDENSIS; arrowhead with pellet below. Rev: DEUS.IN.NOMINE.TVO; cross with six-rayed star (emblem of the Wendish monetary union) in center; arrowhead in top l. quadrant. 18mm, 1.23g. Ref: Dannenberg 261; Saurma 4990.[/QUOTE]