Dicken

The 1629 Dicken was struck when Zürich was navigating the early decades of its post-Reformation municipal coinage program with considerable ambition, issuing denominations that deliberately positioned the city as a sovereign monetary power in the fragmented Swiss confederation. By 1629, the Thirty Years' War had destabilized trade routes and currency across the German-speaking lands, driving demand for reliable city-issued silver. The Zürich Dicken, rooted in a denomination type dating to the late fifteenth century, filled that role for regional commerce.

The Wunderly collection reference — one of the foundational catalogues for Swiss cantonal coinage — indicates this type was carefully documented in the early twentieth century, when Swiss numismatic scholarship began systematically distinguishing the closely related municipal Dicken varieties by die.