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Copper Daler (Görtz Emergency Daler) - Ć 24 mm - 5 grams - Flipside same way up - Struck in 1718. |
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1. DALER S.M
Embossed shield with in it an empty circle containing the text. |
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MERCVRIVS
Roman God Mercury, looking at us with streaming cape. At his right his Caduceus (signifying him as messenger of the Gods) and at left an outstretched arm. At coin top the text and at coin bottom the minting date. In this year more ancient gods were depicted : Jupiter, Saturn, Phoebus & Mars (and of course Mercury). |
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Görtz (Emergency) Daler is the name for Swedish emergency money that King Charles XII
(1697-1718) emitted during the Northern War between Sweden and Russia (1700-1721). The copper
coins took their name from their inventor Geheimrat Freiherr Georg Heinrich von Schlitz, a.k.a.
Von Goertz. He was financial advisor to the king and took this course to get Sweden out of
the monetary shambles the war had gotten them in.
To make counterfeiting more difficult each year new types were issued. Though originally
issued as 1 Daler the coin (of course) turned out to be sensitive to inflation. Furthermore
the new emergency money was soon extremely unpopular. Also because the government ‘forgot’
to take in the old coins when emitting new. In the end more than 4 million coins were in
circulation.
In February 1719 the essentially innocent Goertz was sacrificed to mob feeling and was put to
death at the scaffold.
The promise of full exchangeability at the end of war was only kept partially, After the
peace of Nystadt in 1721, upon which Sweden lost its Balticum, only a part of the emergency
issue was exchanged. The exchange rate proved to be not 1:1 but 1: ˝ (16 Oere). The rest of
the coinage got a value of 1 Oere or was recoined. |
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