Basel struck this half thaler during the final years of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that had devastated much of the Swiss Confederation's neighbors and placed extraordinary fiscal strain on the city's finances. As a free imperial city with its own mint rights, Basel maintained independent coinage throughout the war — a privilege that carried real administrative cost and was defended accordingly.
The HMZ 2#80h attribution places this within a tightly documented die sequence for the period.
Basel struck this half thaler during the final years of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that had devastated much of the Swiss Confederation's neighbors and placed extraordinary fiscal strain on the city's finances. As a free imperial city with its own mint rights, Basel maintained independent coinage throughout the war — a privilege that carried real administrative cost and was defended accordingly.
The HMZ 2#80h attribution places this within a tightly documented die sequence for the period.