Dicken Saint Leodegar facing right, large shield

Lucerne's Dicken coinage emerged from the Swiss Confederation's persistent need for large silver pieces capable of competing with the Thaler denominations flooding in from Habsburg mints. The city held the right to strike such coins by cantonal authority, and production across this half-century was intermittent — driven by trade demand rather than a continuous minting program.

Wielandt's classification of this specific variant under his Luzern sequence reflects a die study conducted decades after the fact; the original mint records for this period are fragmentary at best, making precise dating within the 1550–1601 window largely a matter of stylistic analysis.