1 Thaler - Charles William

Anhalt-Zerbst was one of the smaller Ernestine divisions of the fragmented Anhalt principality, perpetually overshadowed by its neighbors and plagued by succession disputes. Charles William ruled from 1667 until his death in 1718, a reign bookended by the devastation of the Thirty Years' War's aftermath and the disruptions of the Great Northern War pressing into northern German affairs. Thalers from this mint were produced in limited runs — Zerbst never commanded the mining resources of the Saxon or Bohemian mints — making survivors genuinely scarce rather than artificially so.

The principality would later achieve its only real historical notoriety when Charles William's granddaughter, Sophie Auguste Friederike, left Zerbst in 1744 to become Catherine the Great of Russia.