1 Thaler

Basel maintained the right to strike its own coinage well into the late eighteenth century, a privilege jealously guarded by the city's merchant oligarchy long after many Swiss cantons had surrendered monetary autonomy to external pressures. The 1785 date places this piece in the final decades before the French Revolutionary invasion of 1798 effectively ended the old Confederation's patchwork of civic minting rights.

HMZ 2-99h distinguishes this emission within a tightly documented sequence of Basel thalers; the HMZ catalog's granular lettering and die classifications are essential for proper attribution, as superficially similar pieces from adjacent years carry meaningfully different valuations.