11/2 Schilling - Gustav II Adolf

Riga's municipal coinage occupied a complicated legal space in 1623 — the city had passed to Swedish control in 1621 following Gustav II Adolf's siege, but retained its longstanding right to strike its own civic issues, a privilege jealously guarded since the medieval period. This schilling is a product of that uneasy accommodation between a conquering crown and a mercantile city that knew its own financial interests.

The 1½ schilling denomination itself was a pragmatic response to chronic small-change shortages in the Baltic trade economy. Billon of this fineness wore badly in circulation, and survivors with readable surfaces are harder to find than the reference numbers might suggest.