1 Thaler - Ernest III

Ernest III ruled the rump territory of Holstein-Schaumburg-Pinneberg during a period when the county was already in its terminal political decline, squeezed between the ambitions of Hesse-Kassel and the Holstein-Gottorf line. His thalers from this window were struck at the Altona or Pinneberg mint and draw collector attention almost entirely because of the county's extinction — the line died out with Ernst's son Philip in 1626, after which the territory was absorbed by Hesse-Kassel. Survivors from short-lived dynastic issues like this rarely circulated far from their point of origin, which partly explains the frequency of higher-grade examples relative to mintage.