Dicken

Uri was the smallest of the original Swiss forest cantons, yet its position controlling the St. Gotthard Pass gave it outsized economic and political leverage. The Dicken was a regional trade denomination struck in the early seventeenth century as the cantons increasingly asserted their own minting rights, partly as a practical response to the chronic shortage of reliable silver coinage circulating through alpine trade routes. These pieces saw hard use by merchants and drovers moving goods through the pass.

The HMZ reference places this among a tightly documented sequence of Uri cantonal issues. The three-year production window suggests a single contracted minting episode rather than ongoing production.