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1/2 Thaler
| Issuer | City of Bern |
|---|---|
| Year | 1679 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 13.68 g |
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| Obverse description | Central shield bearing the arms of the City of Bern — a diagonal bend sinister with a walking bear — set within an elaborately scrolled and foliate oval cartouche. The entire device is surrounded by a continuous circular legend separated from the coin's beaded border by a narrow flat rim. A small mintmaster's initial 'G' appears in the lower field beneath the cartouche. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Bern's cantonal coinage in the late seventeenth century was shaped less by economics than by the city's evolving status as the dominant power in the Swiss Confederation. The 1679 issue falls during a period when Bern was aggressively consolidating control over the Vaud and maintaining its own monetary system as a deliberate assertion of civic authority against both neighbouring cantons and the Habsburg orbit.
The HMZ cataloguing places this piece among the scarcer half-thaler strikings of the period — the denomination saw irregular production relative to the full thaler, and surviving examples in collectible condition are genuinely thin on the ground.