15 Ducats - Frederick William

Frederick William inherited Brandenburg-Prussia in 1640 with its treasury gutted and its territories occupied or devastated by three decades of the Thirty Years' War. Large gold multiples of this kind were not spending money — they functioned as diplomatic gifts, officer gratuities, and portable concentrated wealth at a moment when the Hohenzollern domains were effectively insolvent. The Berlin mint was barely operational through much of this period, making output from these years fragmentary at best.

KM#203 is among the most substantial gold issues of the early Frederick William reign, struck before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia began the slow reconstruction of Brandenburg's finances.