1 Soldo - Leopoldo II

Leopoldo II took the Tuscan throne in 1824 at just eighteen years old, following the death of his father Ferdinando III. This soldo belongs to the earliest phase of his nearly four-decade reign — the longest of any Grand Duke of Tuscany in the nineteenth century. He would eventually be forced to abdicate in 1859 as the Risorgimento dismantled the old Austro-Hungarian satellite states of the peninsula one by one.

The Florentine mint struck copper small denominations in notoriously inconsistent quality during this period, and planchet preparation for the base-metal issues was rarely prioritized.