1/4 Thaler - Ferdinand II of Tyrol

Ferdinand II ruled Tyrol as an archduke from 1564 until his death in 1595, operating the county as a largely autonomous Habsburg domain. The Hall mint — one of the most technically sophisticated operations in sixteenth-century Europe — produced this fractional thaler during a period when Ferdinand was actively building Ambras Castle and spending aggressively on art patronage, keeping the mint under sustained pressure to produce coin in quantity across multiple denominations.

The .875 fineness places this slightly below the Reichsmünzordnung standards Ferdinand nominally observed, a discrepancy not unusual for territorial coinages of this period.