2 Kreuzers - Thomas III

Haldenstein was a tiny sovereign lordship in the Graubünden region of what is now eastern Switzerland, ruled in 1749 by Thomas III of the Salis-Zizers family. The Salis were a powerful Rhaetian noble dynasty whose members simultaneously commanded foreign mercenary regiments — a common source of income for Graubünden's fractured micro-states — while exercising mint rights that most lords of comparable territorial holdings had long since surrendered. Issues from Haldenstein are scarce precisely because the lordship's population was negligible and its mint output correspondingly small.