1 Thaler - Ernest VII Ellrich, Ausbeutetaler

The Hohnstein Ausbeutetaler is a mine-output thaler — struck specifically from silver extracted from the count's own mining operations in the Harz region, a practice that served both as a declaration of territorial economic rights and a direct conversion of raw extraction into coinage. Ernest VII ruled a fractured inheritance; Hohnstein had been subdivided repeatedly among heirs, and by the 1580s the Ellrich line held only a diminished share of the original county. That a mint operated at all under such constrained sovereignty speaks to how aggressively minor German lords monetized whatever resources remained to them.

The Harz silver mines were among the most productive in sixteenth-century Europe, making Ausbeutetaler from this region commercially credible despite the issuing authority's modest political standing.