The only shilling of John III Sobieski in top mint condition.
An item from the excellent Karolkiewicz collection.
Coin with spectacular mirror shine and intact detail.
Excellent presentation.
A selected piece with the highest grade in the NGC registry.
Friedrich A. Vossberg, in "Munzgeschichte der Stadt Danzig," wrote of the 1688 shilling as follows, "In the absence of perfunctory small coins, the monetary office was given the task of issuing them. Of the three drawings submitted for this purpose, one was approved, after which the stamp was cut. By the monetary probe, Krystian Schirmer on November 20, 1688; 453 marks (fines) and 9 lutes of the one-and-a-half-liter sample of fenigs (shekels) or 1423 florins (zlotys) and 5 pennies in fenigs (shekels) were delivered. For his work Schirmer received 100 florins."
During the reign of Jan Sobieski, the shillings were issued only by the Gdansk mint and only in 1688. Of the city's coinage shillings minted in the 17th and 18th centuries, they represent the most impoverished iconographic variant - without the city's coat of arms and without the initials of the mint manager. According to M. Gumovsky's findings, they were minted with only one pair of stamps, from 1.5-bladed silver. The production volume amounted to 128,220 pieces. At the time, the Danzig mint was headed by the vardayn Christian Schirmer. At the beginning of the 20th century, a doubtful originality of the Danzig shekel (a quadrilateral plate with stars in the corners) appeared in the trade.
