1 Thaler - Charles Alexander Forestry Prize Thaler

Brandenburg-Ansbach issued this piece under Margrave Charles Alexander as a prize coin — Prämienthaler — awarded to foresters and gamekeepers for distinguished service in the administration of the margraviate's woodlands. The practice of issuing such coins was part of a broader German cameralist tradition of using medallic coinage to incentivize forest management at a time when timber was a strategic resource subject to increasingly strict ordinances.

Charles Alexander, who ruled Ansbach from 1757 until ceding the territory to Prussia in 1791, was an enthusiastic patron of this kind of institutional prize-giving. Very few recipients would have spent these in commerce.