The 500 Schilling silver commemorative series ran through the final years of Austria's pre-euro currency, and this 1998 issue honoring the early book printing trade arrived just four years before the schilling was retired permanently. Austria had a legitimate claim to the subject: the region's printing houses, particularly in Vienna and the monastic centers of the alpine lands, were among the earliest north of the Alps to adopt Gutenberg's movable-type technology in the 1460s and 1470s.
The .925 fineness places it in the sterling range rather than the .900 fine standard used in earlier Austrian silver coinage.
The 500 Schilling silver commemorative series ran through the final years of Austria's pre-euro currency, and this 1998 issue honoring the early book printing trade arrived just four years before the schilling was retired permanently. Austria had a legitimate claim to the subject: the region's printing houses, particularly in Vienna and the monastic centers of the alpine lands, were among the earliest north of the Alps to adopt Gutenberg's movable-type technology in the 1460s and 1470s.
The .925 fineness places it in the sterling range rather than the .900 fine standard used in earlier Austrian silver coinage.