5 Ducats Toruń under siege

Toruń struck these emergency siege pieces in 1629 during the Swedish-Polish War, when Gustavus Adolphus was pressing hard into Royal Prussia. The city — a major Hanseatic trading center and one of the wealthiest in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — needed coinage that could function as both currency and a negotiable store of value under blockade conditions. Multiple denomination multiples were struck simultaneously, all from locally available gold.

Kop. 8243 places this among the rarer documented emissions of the siege series. The large flan was necessary to accommodate the weight at a single striking, and die alignment on survivors varies considerably.