1/2 Gold Real - Charles V

Charles V inherited Holland through his grandmother Mary of Burgundy, and the county's coinage during his reign sat at an awkward intersection of Burgundian monetary tradition and the emerging demands of a Habsburg empire financing wars on multiple fronts simultaneously. The half gold real belongs to a series introduced under his grandfather Maximilian and continued fitfully through Charles's reign as emergency revenues from the Low Countries were increasingly redirected toward campaigns in Italy and against the Ottomans.

The .750 fineness places it below the purity of contemporary Flemish coinage, a deliberate debasement that provoked recurring complaints from Holland's merchant class throughout the 1520s and 1530s.