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Szeląg koronny - Jan II Kazimierz Waza Kraków mint
| Issuer | Kraków Mint |
|---|---|
| Year | 1660 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Copper |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Laureate and draped bust of King John II Casimir Vasa facing right, occupying the central field of the coin. The portrait is rendered in a bold, somewhat crude hammered style typical of mid-17th-century Polish coinage. A circular Latin legend surrounds the bust, reading IOA CAS REX (with variants), abbreviating Ioannes Casimirus Rex. The mintmaster's initials T.L.B. appear in the lower portion of the legend, identifying the Kraków mint official responsible for production. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | IOA CAS REX T.L.B. IOAN CAS REX T.L.B. IOAN CASI REX T.L.B. IOAN CAS REX IOAN CASI REX |
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| Additional information |
Jan II Kazimierz's copper szelągi are inseparable from the fiscal disaster that followed the Swedish invasions known as the Deluge. With the royal treasury gutted and silver coinage hoarded or melted, the Crown turned to debased copper issues in the late 1650s to keep any money at all circulating. The Kraków mint struck these in enormous quantities — so enormous that the coins were almost immediately distrusted, driving good silver further underground and accelerating the very inflation they were meant to relieve.
By 1660, the year of the Treaty of Oliva ending hostilities with Sweden, Poland-Lithuania's monetary system was in open crisis. Mass counterfeiting, much of it conducted in Brandenburg and Silesia, flooded the market with pieces indistinguishable from official output.