10 Schillings 'Örtli'

The "Örtli" designation — diminutive of "Ort," a quarter-unit — reflects Zürich's persistent attachment to its own reckoning system long after neighboring cantons had rationalized their coinages. The city maintained autonomous monetary production through most of the eighteenth century, a stubbornness that frustrated Confederation-wide standardization efforts repeatedly and visibly. This denomination occupied an awkward transitional value, used heavily in local market settlements but rarely traveling far beyond the canton.

The thirty-five year production span across multiple obverse dies accounts for the considerable variation collectors encounter within the type — Wunderly's subdivisions remain the most granular reference for distinguishing the earlier from later emissions.