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2 'Dicke' Krone - Christian IV closed crown
| Issuer | Denmark |
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| Year | 1624 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Full-length effigy of King Christian IV standing facing right, attired in royal regalia, holding a scepter at hip height in his right hand while his left hand rests on the pommel of a sword. The royal figure is contained within a beaded or rope inner circle, with the Latin legend arranged in the outer field. The Roman numeral IIII appears consistently to the left of the king's feet within the design. |
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| Obverse lettering | CHRISTIANUS· | ·IIII· D:G:DANI· (Translation: Christian IV (King of) Denmark by the grace of God) |
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| Additional information |
Christian IV struck this double crown — the "dicke" designation simply indicating double weight — during a period of aggressive monetary experimentation in Denmark, when the king was actively manipulating coinage standards to fund his interventionist foreign policy ahead of his disastrous entry into the Thirty Years' War in 1625. The closed crown type distinguished royal issues of this period from earlier open-crown varieties, a deliberate heraldic statement of consolidated sovereign authority following decades of Oldenburg dynastic consolidation.
Christian's war financing proved catastrophic. The Danish campaign ended in defeat at the Battle of Lutter in 1626, and subsequent monetary debasements make high-fineness issues from 1624 among the last struck to these silver standards before the fiscal pressures of war reshaped the coinage entirely.