5 Soldi - Thomas III

Haldenstein was among the smallest sovereign entities in the Graubünden region of the Swiss Confederation — a lordship of barely a few square kilometers whose coinage rights were jealously maintained as a mark of jurisdictional independence. By 1748, Thomas III of Schauenstein-Ehrenfels was exercising those rights in what proved to be the final decades before the lordship was absorbed into the Canton of Graubünden in 1819. Issues from this mint are scarce simply because the population they served was tiny and the striking runs correspondingly brief.