THALER: COIN OF PRUSSIA
1 thaler, 1800: Kingdom of Prussia (Germany)
Ruler: Frederick William III (German "Friedrich Wilhelm III") — King of Prussia from 1797 until 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, when the Empire was dissolved.
EIN THALER: one thaler.
Small Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Prussia: the black Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire inside crowned shield that holded by so-called The Wild Men — figures from Germanic and Celtic mythology.
"A" under the date "1800" — symbol of the Berlin Mint, Germany (Berlin was the capital of the Prussia from 1701).
FRIEDR WILHELM III KŒNIG VON PREUSSEN: Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia.
Bust of Friedrich with Order of the Black Eagle on the chest.
- Silver (0.750): 36 mm - 21.82 g
- Reference price: 83$
COIN THALER — WHERE & WHEN (coins catalog: by names & emitents)
- GERMAN STATES (16th-19th centuries)
- BOHEMIA (16th-18th centuries)
- AUSTRIA (16th-20th centuries) — AUSTRIAN STATES + AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
- BELGIAN STATES (16th century)
- FRENCH STATES (16th-17th centuries)
- SWISS CANTONS (16th-18th centuries)
- ...
THALER as coin name.
Thaler... What other coins of the world of all times and peoples can compare with this coin in terms of the significance of its impact on the economic development of mankind? I am sure that there are only a few of them. Moreover, it is the thaler that I would place in the first place in such a list. — I will explain my opinion.
Approximately in the 7th century BC, with the gradual complication of commodity-money relations, the first coins appeared. The most ancient coins did not have their own names — denominations. At least, nothing is known about them.
Gradually, for convenience, coins began to be standardized by metal and weight. The first denominations appeared: drachm, stater and others. However, all of them initially had a purely local meaning: they were in circulation only in the lands of Asia Minor, the Balkans, Hindustan, China...
In the 3rd century BC the first really, in my personal opinion, international coin began to be issued — the denarius. The ancient Romans used it not only for internal settlements, but also for trade with other nations. But we are talking about relations with neighboring, adjacent territories. Although, it is worth noting that from a formal point of view, the territories of three continents — Europe, Asia and Africa — were involved in this process at least partially.
After the fall of Rome, Europe plunged into a crisis of monetary affairs. The small silver denar became popular, which, with the beginning of the Crusades and the import of significant volumes of Middle Eastern silver, was replaced by a slightly larger groschen. In parallel, individual states also minted a lot of other, less common local denominations. All these coins traditionally lost quality over time, depreciated, were converted from silver to billon, and sometimes even degraded into copper types. This was facilitated, among other factors, by the depletion of silver deposits and a significant decrease in its import from abroad.
All this did not at all ensure global interstate economic relations. — However, everything changed radically with the advent of the thaler. What is known about its appearance?
At the end of the 15th century, the situation with the availability of silver significantly improved due to the development of its mining technologies in Europe and the beginning of its large-scale import from the lands of the so-called Latin America. All this created the prerequisites for the start of the emission of large silver coins. But at first these were not thalers.
The first to appear was the guldengroschen (or guldiner) — a large silver coin, the value of which was equivalent to a gold gulden. Such coins began to be minted mainly in the lands of modern Germany, Austria...
These were the first such large mass silver coins in history.
And already in 1520, a historical event occurred — in the Bohemian city of Joachimsthal, the emission of a new type of guldengroschens began, which were called Joachimsthaler or simply Thaler after the place of their appearance. These were high-quality, large (over 25 grams) and visually attractive coins that were warmly welcomed by the population.
From the very beginning, the circulation of the coin became unprecedentedly high and within a few years reached several million, which at that time and for such a large and therefore expensive coin was an outstanding achievement.
Thalers began to be issued by various German states, neighboring state formations, and soon coins of this type were issued almost throughout Europe. The thaler quickly went from a local Bohemian coin to the main trade coin of international economic relations.
Like the US dollar in our time, during the 16th-19th centuries, the thaler (though not by one, but by many different issuers) performed a global mission — it provided convenient international trade.
There are different types of thalers: vereinsthaler, reichsthaler, kronenthaler, conventionsthaler... as well as a number of derivative denomination names — talar, daler, riksdaler, rigsdaler, speciedaler, daalder, leeuwendaalder, tolar... and, finally, dollar.
The 400-year history of the thaler ended in the mid-20th century with the cessation of minting of the most common type of this trade coin — the Maria Theresa thaler (although, from a formal point of view, this coin was minted until the very end of the 20th century, it was no longer a coin for circulation or international trade).
By the way, the global nature of the "thaler" phenomenon can also be evidenced by the fact that even now, in the 21st century, tresures are regularly and quite massively found in different parts of Europe from Portugal to Ukraine based on thalers from different historical periods and various issuers. The coin was a standard, a stable unit of international payments and a reliable means of savings.
