2 mariengroschen - Frederick William

Frederick William — the "Great Elector" — was in the process of rebuilding Brandenburg-Prussia's shattered finances after the Thirty Years' War, which had left the currency system fragmented across dozens of local standards. The 2 Mariengroschen coinage of the 1650s was part of a broader effort to rationalize circulation in the electorate's North German territories, where the Mariengroschen remained the dominant unit of everyday reckoning despite imperial pressure toward standardization.

The Schrötter reference range 1980–1986 spans several die varieties across this emission, differing principally in the arrangement of the electoral arms and minor legend punctuation — worth examining closely before attributing to a specific die pairing.