1679 Klippe Thaler

In 1678-79 the treaties signed at Nijmegen (Nimwegen) brought the Franco-Dutch War to a close, ending six years of fighting that had drawn in the Dutch Republic, France, Spain, Brandenburg and the Empire. Across the German states the peace was marked with commemorative strikings, and Saxony's contribution under Elector Johann Georg II is among the most striking: a klippe - a coin struck on a square or diamond-shaped flan rather than a round one.

Klippen began as emergency money in besieged cities, where blanks were simply cut from sheet silver, but by the seventeenth century German princes had adopted the shape for presentation and commemorative pieces. The corners give the engraver a wider canvas and, just as importantly, they announce at a glance that the piece was never meant for ordinary circulation.

The obverse presents an allegory of Fortune: a nude figure striding across a bank of clouds, one hand reaching toward a flaming vessel, above the motto VIRTUTI PARATA - "prepared for virtue." The reverse carries the elector's titles around the border - IOH GEORGII II D G DUX SAX IUL CLIV ET MONT ELECT - with the coats of arms of the Saxon lands set at the four corners, and within a laurel wreath the inscription SUSCIPIANT MONTES PACEM POPULO, from Psalm 72: "let the mountains bring peace to the people," followed by the date ANNO MDCLXXIX and the denomination 1 THAL.

The coin's surfaces are why it stops people. Untouched since the eighteenth century, it carries the full spectrum of cabinet toning - rose, cobalt, gold and sea-green banded across the fields and pooling along the raised borders - the kind of patina that only forms slowly in a wooden coin cabinet and cannot be manufactured. Uncirculated Saxon klippen with original toning of this quality are genuinely difficult coins, and this is a peace commemorative that looks the part.