6 Gröscher - Frederick III

Frederick III issued these six-groschen pieces in the final years before his most consequential political move: in January 1701 he crowned himself Frederick I, King in Prussia, in a ceremony he organized and paid for himself after negotiating with Emperor Leopold I. The deal secured Prussian troops for the War of the Spanish Succession. This coin therefore predates, by months or at most a few years, the elevation that transformed Brandenburg-Prussia from an electorate into a kingdom — making the "Frederick III" attribution soon obsolete.