A very rare vintage of SAP thalers. LITH inscription variety.
On the reverse the initials EB of the mincmaster Efraim Brenn.
A very nice piece. Excellent detail for this type of coin. Nice, clear mirror and a nice, aged patina, locally darker on the reverse.
Piece from the 77th WCN Auction (final price 43,700 zlotys).
Definitely one of the nicer pieces recently offered on the auction market.
Obverse: head of the king to the right
STANISLAUS AUGUSTUS D G REX POL M D LITU
Reverse: five-field escutcheon under the crown, around it a wreath of oak leaves and palm trees wrapped in a sash, at the bottom a cross of the Order of the White Eagle
X EX MARCH PURA COLONIEN 1777
Diameter 40 mm, weight 28.10 g
In 1768 the appearance of the obverse of the thalers was radically changed. The half-figure of the king in armor was replaced by a head, and the one decoration that was applied is the hairband, which appears on obverses from 1768 to 1782. The composition of the reverse remained unchanged. The rim of the coin also changed, with the previous leaf composition replaced by an inscription with the Latin phrase FIDEI PUBLICAE PIGNUS (faith is a public guarantee). The 1768 thalers can have three rant variations. Twenty-eight reverse stamps were used to strike the 14 thaler anniversaries.
During the first two years of Stanislaw August's reign, municipal mints operated in Gdansk and Torun (1765 and 1766). However, these cities were forced to close them. This was because the king intended to recover from the monetary chaos left over from the Saxon era and introduce a new monetary system. Its basis was to be the Dutch ducat and the thaler minted from the Cologne fine (pure silver) in 10 pieces. The reform came into effect in 1766, and the monetary circulation of the Republic included fine and full-value coins: ducats, thalers, zlotys, pennies and their fractions and multiples. The fact that these were full-value coins caused them to be pulled from the market and melted down into lower-quality Prussian coins. For this reason, the monetary system was revised twice, including changing the minting rate (1787 and 1794). During the reign of Stanislaw August there were two state mints in operation: the Cracow and Warsaw mints.
