Salzburg 1576-SR 1/2 guldenthaler
This specimen was lot 2651 in Künker sale 384 (Osnabrück, March 2023), where it sold for €220 (about US$284 including buyer's fees). The catalog description[1] noted,
"Johann Jakob Khuen von Belasi, 1560-1586. 1/2 Guldentaler (30 Kreuzer) 1576, mit Titel Maximilians II. Henkelspur, getilgte Wertzahl auf der Rückseite, sehr schön. Exemplar der Auktion H. D. Rauch 25, Wien 1979, Nr. 1928. (archbishopric of Salzburg, John Jacob Khuen of Belasi, 1560-86, half guldenthaler or thirty kreuzer of 1576, struck in the name of Maximilian II. Mount mark, value ground off on the reverse. very fine.)"
The Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical state between Bavaria and Austria and usually ruled by a Hapsburg client. This denomination 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, this coin was 5/12 of a thaler. This example may have had the value ground off so as to pass for a half thaler (36 kreuzer). Guldenthalers of sixty kreuzer also exist. 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 12,21 g.
Catalog reference: Probszt 599; Zöttl 675 (Type 2).
- 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.
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