Salzburg 1568 1/2 guldenthaler
This specimen was lot 2649 in Künker sale 384 (Osnabrück, March 2023), where it sold for €1,600 (about US$2,068 including buyer's fees). The catalog description[1] noted,
"Johann Jakob Khuen von Belasi, 1560-1586. 1/2 Guldentaler (30 Kreuzer) 1568, mit Titel Maximilians II. Von großer Seltenheit. Hübsche Patina, sehr schön. (archbishopric of Salzburg, John Jacob Khuen of Belasi, 1560-86, half guldenthaler of thirty kreuzer of 1568, struck in the name of Maximilian II. Extremely rare, handsome patina, very fine.)"
The Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical state between Bavaria and Austria and usually ruled by a Hapsburg client. The guldenthaler appears for the first time from various German states in the 1560's. It marks the separation between the gulden (always sixty kreuzer) and the thaler (first 60, then 72, then 90 and finally 120 kreuzer in the mid-eighteenth century). At this time, the half guldenthaler was 5/12 of a thaler. In the seventeenth century, Salzburg was blessed with a number of productive silver mines and the prince-archbishop was a prolific issuer of coins, particularly thalers. The archbishopric was secularized in 1803 and passed to Austria in 1814.
Recorded mintage: unknown.
Specification: silver, this specimen 12,12 g.
Catalog reference: Probszt 593; Zöttl 669 (Type 1).
- Craig, William D., Germanic Coinages: Charlemagne through Wilhelm II, Mountain View, CA: 1954.
- Helmut Zöttl, Salzburg Münzen und Medaillen, 1500-1810, 2 vols. Salzburg: Verlag Fruhwald, 2008.
- [1]Künker, Fritz Rudolf, Horst-Rudiger Künker, Ulrich Künker and Andreas Kaiser, Katalog 384: Münzen, Medaillen und Marken von Salzburg - Die Sammlung Professor Dr. Franz Schedel, Osnabrück: Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co., AG, 2023.
Link to:
- 1567 half thaler
- 1568 guldenthaler = 60 kreuzer
- 1568 double ducat
- 1570 half guldenthaler = 30 kreuzer
- Coins and currency dated 1568