4 Groats - Sigismund II Augustus

Sigismund II Augustus issued this denomination during the final years of his reign, a period dominated by the negotiations that would produce the Union of Lublin in 1569 — the act that merged the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kingdom of Poland into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Lithuanian mint at Vilnius pressed hard to establish a coherent silver coinage before that union effectively subordinated Lithuanian monetary administration to a joint framework.

The four-groat denomination itself was an awkward middle value, never fully embraced by commerce, which may partly explain why surviving examples in better grades remain findable today.