¼ Thaler - Rudolph II Joachimsthal

Joachimsthal — today's Jáchymov in the Czech Republic — was the mint that gave the world the word "dollar," its name contracted through "Joachimsthaler" into common currency across Europe and eventually the Americas. By 1607, the mines that had made the town famous in the 1520s were running thinner, but the mint remained politically important to Rudolf II, whose court at Prague depended on Bohemian silver revenues to fund his increasingly erratic rule and his obsessive patronage of alchemists and astronomers.

Rudolf's authority over Bohemia was effectively stripped by his brother Matthias in 1608, making issues from the tail end of this date range — 1609 and 1610 — products of a sovereign already deposed in all but title.