1/4 Ducat - Frederick August I

Frederick August I — better known as Augustus the Strong — funded an extraordinarily extravagant court at Dresden, and his mint at that period was producing fractional gold in part to facilitate the small-denomination transactions that silver and copper couldn't elegantly serve for wealthier merchants. By 1726 he had already been King of Poland for nearly three decades, having converted to Catholicism in 1697 to secure that election, a decision that alienated much of his Lutheran Saxon electorate and haunted his political standing at home for the rest of his reign.