17 Kreuzer - Franz I

The 17-kreuzer denomination is an artifact of the monetary chaos that followed the War of the Austrian Succession, when Maria Theresa's treasury was badly depleted and the empire's coinage system was badly fragmented across dozens of local standards. The odd denomination — neither a clean fraction of the gulden nor a simple multiple of common units — emerged from attempts to reconcile Bohemian, Hungarian, and Austrian monetary conventions into something practically spendable across all three. Franz I issued these largely as consort emperor, the actual financial administration sitting firmly with Maria Theresa and her finance minister Count Haugwitz.

Production ran across multiple mints, accounting for the variety of H references catalogued for this type.