The Mysterious 3 Krejcar of Ferdinand II.

So after some time I finally got to write a short article about my still relatively new hobby, detectoring. The longer pause was due to the fact that I was waiting for a more interesting find to come along again, which would be worth elaborating on in more detail. This finally happened when I found a very interesting coin. At first I thought it was an older silver coin, but when I cleaned the coin it turned out to be not silver, but copper. It looked like most silver coins, but there was nothing to read on it. So I resigned myself to the fact that the coin was simply ruined by its long stay in the ground. After a while, I didn't give up and tried a more aggressive cleaning method, thinking there was nothing left to lose. But the cleaning was surprisingly successful, and it turned out to be a three-creed coin from 1626, the reign of King Ferdinand II. Habsburg. But such a three-krejcar is supposed to be silver and this one was copper! So it is a fake coin of the period!

3 Krejcar from the reign of Ferdinand II - all three versions of this coin side by side, i.e. the real one, then the so-called "kipper" and the fake one on the far right.

Finding a silver coin is not that common, but finding a fake silver coin is really rare. Why? Because, of course, coins have always been counterfeited, but the fake ones have always been logically much, much fewer than the real ones. So I began to look in detail at fake coins from the difficult times of the Thirty Years' War, i.e. from the reign of King Ferdinand II. Habsburg, whose likeness adorns the fake Three Kings coin I just found. But in the end, I also discovered that this three-creole coin exists not only as a classic, i.e. genuine and fake, but also as something of a halfway house, i.e. as a so-called cypher coin.

Thegenuine 3 Krejcar of Ferdinand II - this is a fairly ordinary small silver coin that was in common circulation in its time. It was minted in large volumes at several mints throughout the monarchy and also in many versions and more or less different variants. The average size of a genuine coin was about 20 millimetres and the weight about 1.4 grams. Exact identification of the genuine coin in the photographs: 3 krejcar 1636, Prague mint, mintmaster Tobias Schuster and actual weight 1.35 grams.

Cypher 3 krejcar of Ferdinand II - an interesting version of a valid coin. The Kipr (long) coin is, in simple terms, an inflationary coin. After the defeat of the Bohemian Estates, the mint was leased by the De Witte consortium, which not only rapidly reduced the prescribed silver content of the coins but also their total weight. Even in the photo you can see the copper shining through. The exact identification of the cypher coin in the photographs: 3 krejcar 1623, mint Prague, mintmaster Benes Hübmer and actual weight 0.74 grams.

Fake 3 krejcar of Ferdinand II - after the Danish army occupied Opava on 20.8.1626, the administrator Jáchym Miclav was appointed, who decided to mint fake imperial coins. The equipment of the mint was transferred from Těšín to Hradec u Opava and Baltazar Zwirner was appointed mintmaster. The coin is copper, weakly silvered. Precise identification of the fake coin: Ferdinand II, 3 krejcar 1626, mint Hradec u Opavy, mintmasters Baltazar Zwirner and Daniel Raschke, actual weight 0,78 grams.

The difference can be seen in the individual photographs (see below in the image gallery), while the regular genuine 3 Krejcar is a relatively honest and massive silver coin, the cypher version is much thinner, only half the weight and the shining copper is clearly visible in the photographs. The fake version is also thin, visibly only copper, with only slight remnants of silver plating.

King Ferdinand II of Bohemia. Habsburg

Ferdinand II. HabsburgFerdinand II. Habsburg - by the will of God, Emperor of Rome, always a multiplier, King of Bohemia, Germany and Hungary, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, ShPrince of Burgundy, Prince of Burgundy, Prince of Carinthia, Prince of Carinthia, Prince of Crown and Württenberg, Prince of Silesia and Luxembourg, Margrave of Moravia and Lusatia, Count of Habsburg, Count of Flanders and Count of Tyrol.

He was born on 9 July 1578 in Graz, the son of Archduke Charles of Styria and Maria of Bavaria, and grandson of Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg. In 1617 he was chosen by the Bohemian Estates as King of Bohemia and a year later he was crowned King of Hungary. His reign would mark the beginning of Habsburg absolutism for the Bohemian lands. After the death of Emperor Matthias in 1619, he succeeds as Roman Emperor, but shortly before that he is deprived of the Bohemian throne by the Czech Estates, which is then occupied by Friedrich V. He becomes one of the leaders of the so-called Catholic League, defeats the Czech Estates on the White Mountain and resumes the Czech government.He comes to terms with the original Estates in Prague's Old Town Square, where the famous execution of 27 Czech lords takes place. In 1627, he issues the Restored Provincial Establishment, which limits the power of the provincial assemblies, declares the Czech throne hereditary for the Habsburg monarchs, equated the German language with Czech, and declared Catholicism the only acceptable religion.Tens of thousands of Catholics, including, for example, Jan Amos Comenius, leave the country after the establishment. During the Thirty Years' War, he thrives, but his successes belong more to the commander-in-chief of the imperial armies, Albrecht von Wallenstein.In 1635 he concluded the so-called Peace of Prague with the Saxon Elector John George of Saxony, which resulted in the separation of Upper and Lower Lusatia from Bohemia. Ferdinand II. Habsburg dies in Vienna on 15 February 1637 and his remains are buried in his native Graz.

I asked my detectorist colleagues and friends to lend me the two missing versions of the coin, the genuine and the cypher versions, and I also asked a numismatist for some background information on these coins. Thank you all very much and greetings to them. For the record, I will add that the subject is of course much broader and one could write a whole book on it, as it is an interesting subject and similar other coins had the same fate, but I will leave that to the real experts - I was mainly interested in the common photo of all three versions and the basic info.

Just to be sure, the fake coin I found was handed over to the Regional Museum in Jílové u Prahy.

Good luck and keep your fingers crossed, more detector findings will follow soon! :-)

Michal Kupsa alias Kapsa