1 Thaler - John Frederick II, John William and John Frederick III

By 1560, the Ernestinian Saxons had already lost the electoral dignity to their Albertine cousins following the Schmalkaldic War — John Frederick I's defeat at Mühlberg in 1547 cost his line both the vote and the bulk of Saxony proper. The three rulers named on this thaler were governing what remained: a reduced territorial patchwork in Thuringia, struck under the fiction of joint rule that the Ernestinian inheritance system perpetually imposed on the dynasty.

Three-ruler coinages create immediate attribution headaches, and the Ernestinian issues of the 1550s–60s are no exception. Schnee 150 sits within a tightly clustered group of die marriages; collectors working the series closely track subtle armorial differences between otherwise near-identical emissions.