Thaler with shield - Charles III bearded bust

Charles III of Lorraine was still a minor under French regency when this thaler was struck — he only began ruling independently in 1559, making the coinage of the 1560s his first mature issues as a sovereign duke. The "bearded bust" designation distinguishes this type from his earlier clean-shaven portraits, a distinction that matters for dating since his beard appears consistently in portraiture only from the mid-1560s onward.

Flon's cataloguing of this piece as number 60 places it within a tightly sequenced run of Nancy mint production. The Davenport reference GT I#9385 confirms its classification among German-standard talers, though Lorraine's political position straddling French and Imperial spheres meant these coins circulated in both directions across a contested border.