⅔ Thaler - Detlef

The County of Rantzau was a tiny imperial immediacy in Holstein, carved out of lands held by the powerful Rantzau family and granted comital status in 1650. The ⅔ Thaler — essentially the gulden or 2/3 piece that dominated North German trade in the late seventeenth century — was the workhorse denomination of the period, widely accepted across the fragmented currencies of the Empire. Detlef von Rantzau's decision to strike his own coinage was as much a political statement of sovereign standing as a practical one; the county's total land area was barely sufficient to justify the pretension.

The issue is rare. Rantzau's minting activity was brief and small in volume.