Anhalt-Zerbst 1764 heller
This specimen was lot 900 in Steve Album Auction 51 (Santa Rosa, CA, January 2025), where it sold for $216. The catalog description[1] noted, "JEVER: Friedrich August von Anhalt-Zerbst, 1747-1793, AE heller, 1764, a wonderful lustrous example with much original red luster! PCGS graded MS64 BN." Jever, on the North Sea between Oldenburg and Ostfriesland, passed thru many hands. It was briefly Russian 1793-98 and 1813-18, French 1807-13 and finally annexed to Oldenburg in 1818. This type was struck 1764 only. One thaler was 576 heller.
The dynastic affairs of this principality are very tangled. Wikipedia comments,
"In 1742 princes John Louis II and Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg inherited Anhalt-Zerbst. After Christian August's death in 1747, his widow Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp governed the country for her son Frederick Augustus until 1752. She had the new castle at Dornburg built as her thirds from 1750, a lavish baroque palace prepared to host her brother, Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, or her daughter Sophie Auguste Fredericka, who in 1745 had married the Russian crown prince Peter III, to become empress in 1762, better known as Catherine the Great. However, neither of them ever visited her, and the dowager princess and her son were forced into exile when Prussian forces invaded Anhalt-Zerbst during the Seven Years' War in 1758. Frederick the Great, who had actually proposed the Russian marriage, accused the princess and her son of supporting Russia, then his war enemy. Johanna Elisabeth died in Paris in 1760 and her son, Frederick Augustus, never returned to Zerbst and continued to live in Basel and Luxemburg. Upon his death in 1793, the Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst came to an end with its territory being divided among the Ascanian princes of Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Köthen, and Anhalt-Bernburg while Jever was inherited by his sister, Catherine the Great, and remained under Russian rule until 1818."
Recorded mintage: unknown.
Specification: copper, 17.2 mm diameter.
Catalog reference: KM-96 (listed under Jever), J-1, Merzdorf-131, Mann-424.
- Craig, William D., Germanic Coinages: Charlemagne through Wilhelm II, Mountain View, CA: 1954.
- Michael, Thomas, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701-1800, 7th ed., Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2016.
- [1]Album, Stephen, Joseph Lang, Paul Montz, Michael Barry and Norman Douglas Nicol, Auction 51, featuring the Howard Daniel III Collection of Asian Coins, the Almer H. Orr III Collection of World Coins and the Joe Sedillot Collection of German Coins, Santa Rosa, CA: Stephen Album Rare Coins, Inc., 2024.
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