2 Speciedaler - Christian IV

Glückstadt — "Lucky City" — was founded by Christian IV in 1617 as a deliberate rival to Hamburg, positioned to intercept North Sea trade along the Elbe. The 1623 coinage issued in the city's name was part of the broader project of legitimizing the new settlement as a commercial center worthy of its own monetary output, produced less than a decade after the first foundations were laid in marshy ground. The ambition was real; the commercial challenge to Hamburg ultimately was not.

The Dav EC II#3667 attribution places this squarely within the Emergency Coinage series for the Lower Saxon Circle, a designation that reflects the monetary pressures preceding Denmark's disastrous entry into the Thirty Years' War three years later.