1/2 Ducat - Frederick William I

Frederick William I took the Prussian throne in 1713, the same year this coin was struck, and immediately dismantled his father's extravagant court — selling off the silver tableware, dismissing hundreds of courtiers, and redirecting royal expenditure toward the military. Gold coinage continued, but the new king's fiscal austerity reshaped mint priorities almost at once. His reign would see military spending consume over eighty percent of the state budget within a decade.

Fr#2325 is among the scarcer fractional gold issues of early Hohenzollern Prussia, with surviving examples concentrated in a handful of European institutional collections.