Obol - Matthias Corvinus

Matthias Corvinus seized the Hungarian throne in 1458 at nineteen, elected by a faction of lesser nobles who assumed he'd be manageable. He wasn't. These early obols belong to the first years of his consolidation, before his military campaigns and the later fiscal reforms that would reshape the kingdom's coinage entirely. The billon content of these pieces reflects chronic silver shortages that had plagued the Hungarian mint system since the mid-fifteenth century.

H#700 and H#701 represent distinct die varieties catalogued separately by Huszár despite near-identical weights.