2 Thalers

Zürich's right to strike thalers derived from an imperial privilege, and by the mid-sixteenth century the city was producing large silver pieces that circulated well beyond Swiss borders into south German trade networks. The 1559 double thaler belongs to a period when Zürich was consolidating civic authority after the disruptions of the Reformation, and the city mint's output reflected both commercial ambition and republican self-presentation. These are not common pieces — double thalers from Swiss city-states of this period survive in genuinely small numbers, and many known examples have passed through the same handful of major auction houses repeatedly over the past century.