2 Thalers

Lucerne's double thaler issues of the late seventeenth century were produced not as workhorse currency but as prestige pieces — diplomatic gifts and demonstration strikes that circulated among magistrates and foreign dignitaries far more than among merchants. The city-state jealously guarded its minting rights, one of the few urban privileges that survived the consolidating pressures of the Swiss Confederation's internal politics, and heavy silver pieces like this one were periodic reassertions of that autonomy.

The Dav. EC II attribution places it firmly within the large-crown-sized civic issues that Davenport treated as a coherent collecting category. HMZ 2-663b distinguishes this variety from the closely related 663a by die characteristics that remain the subject of ongoing specialist debate.