⅙ Thaler - Frederick William IV

Frederick William IV's reign saw persistent tension between his romantic conservatism and the reformist pressures that had nearly toppled the Hohenzollern throne in 1848. This denomination was a holdover of the old Thaler-based system, already being squeezed out by the push toward the standardized Vereinsthaler that Prussia and the other German states were negotiating throughout the early 1850s. The Dresden Coinage Convention of 1838 had set the framework, but it took the Vienna Coinage Treaty of 1857 to finally consolidate the system — making this a coin type that was obsolete almost the moment the last dies were retired.