1 Schilling - Johan III Type 2

Reval's municipal coinage in the latter half of the sixteenth century operated under constant pressure from the Livonian crisis — the city had passed under Swedish suzerainty in 1561, yet retained extraordinary autonomy, including the right to strike its own billon. These schillings circulated alongside Swedish, Polish, and Russian issues in a port economy where currency mixing was the rule rather than the exception. Johan III's protracted reign gave the type its unusual twenty-eight year production window, long enough for multiple die generations and considerable variation in silver content as the billon standard quietly degraded.