1 Thaler - Frederick August I

Frederick August I—better known as Augustus the Strong—was Elector of Saxony from 1694, but these thalers predate his most audacious political maneuver: his conversion to Catholicism in 1697, undertaken solely to secure election as King of Poland. The Saxon mint at Dresden continued striking in his name throughout this period of religious and dynastic calculation, producing coins that circulated under an elector who was simultaneously negotiating away his Lutheranism for a crown.

KM#669 spans the years just before and immediately after that conversion, meaning examples from 1697–1698 were struck for a ruler whose confessional status had already quietly changed.