1 Thaler - Charles Ferdinand Vasa Klippe

Charles Ferdinand Vasa, Bishop of Breslau from 1625, was the younger brother of the Polish king Władysław IV and a son of Sigismund III — which made his ecclesiastical appointment as much a dynastic maneuver as a spiritual one. The Thirty Years' War was tearing through Silesia in 1632, the same year Gustavus Adolphus died at Lützen not far to the north, and klippe issues from this period frequently reflect emergency or ceremonial minting rather than routine production.

The square flan format at this weight required deliberate hand-cutting from rolled silver strip, and surviving examples almost invariably show uneven edges from that process.