1/2 Ducat

Zürich's half ducat issues of this period were struck on the ducat standard the city had maintained since the sixteenth century, a deliberate alignment with the dominant trade coinage of the Holy Roman Empire that kept Zürich's gold acceptable across markets from Frankfurt to Venice. The city's mint authority was jealously guarded — Zürich resisted imperial mint reform pressures repeatedly, and these issues reflect that independence in their consistently high fineness.

The thirty-year span of this type coincided almost exactly with the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, a period when gold hoarding and cross-border flight capital kept small-denomination gold in active circulation far longer than peacetime conditions would suggest.