⅓ Thaler - Max Gandolf von Kuenburg Mansfeld-Eisleben, Countermarked

Max Gandolf von Kuenburg, Archbishop of Salzburg from 1668 to 1687, ruled during a period of aggressive Catholic consolidation — he is most notoriously remembered for expelling the Protestant miners of the Defereggental in 1684. The countermark applied to this Mansfeld-Eisleben host coin reflects a common Salzburg practice of validating foreign silver for local circulation rather than recoining it outright, a pragmatic response to chronic shortages of locally struck divisional silver.

Mansfeld-Eisleben coinage was produced in the copper-mining counties of Saxony, and pieces circulated widely across the Holy Roman Empire. The Zöttl reference spans three sub-varieties distinguished by countermark placement and die state.