1 Thaler - Erich III

Erich III ruled Brunswick-Calenberg for less than a decade before dying without legitimate heirs in 1584, collapsing his branch of the Welf dynasty and triggering a succession dispute that ultimately folded the principality into Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. These thalers were struck across a five-year window during which Erich was already maneuvering creditors and mortgaging territorial revenues — the coins themselves partly a tool for meeting financial obligations to the Empire.

Davenport's German Talers attribution places this firmly within the broader Welf minting tradition of the period, where multiple related principalities struck near-identical weight standards, making die-sharing arrangements between mints a documented occurrence.