Thaler

The thaler (also spelled taler) was a large silver coin first struck in quantity at Joachimsthal in Bohemia, now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic, from 1519–1520. It became the standard large silver coin of central and northern Europe for more than three centuries, and its name, through Low German and Dutch forms such as daler and daalder, is the origin of the English word "dollar".

The thaler was not one currency but a family of coins issued by many rulers and cities, broadly similar in size and silver content, which served as an international medium of exchange for large payments.

The thaler grew out of a wish to have a silver coin equal in value to the gold gulden. The first such coin, the Guldengroschen, was struck in Tyrol in 1486, and Saxony followed in about 1500. Large-scale production became possible when rich silver deposits were found in the Ore Mountains. At Joachimsthal, silver was discovered in 1516, and the counts of Schlick, who held the mining rights, began striking large silver coins there around 1519–1520.

These coins were called Joachimsthaler, after the valley (Tal) of Saint Joachim. The name was soon shortened to "thaler" and applied to similar coins struck elsewhere. In 1528 the Habsburg king of Bohemia, Ferdinand I, took over the Joachimsthal mint.

Thalers typically weighed about 28–29 grams of good silver, although the standard differed between issuers and periods. The Holy Roman Empire defined an imperial thaler, the Reichsthaler, in a coinage ordinance of 1566, and the name was used for both coins and units of account well into the nineteenth century. Later standards included the Convention thaler of 1753 and the Prussian thaler, and the Vienna monetary treaty of 1857 created the Vereinsthaler for the German and Austrian states.

Their large size gave room for detailed portraits, coats of arms and inscriptions, and thalers became a favourite way for rulers to mark coronations, victories and anniversaries. Related coins appeared across Europe: the Dutch daalder and lion dollar, the Danish and Norwegian rigsdaler, the Swedish riksdaler and the Italian tallero. In Scandinavia these units lasted until the Scandinavian Monetary Union introduced the Swedish krona and Danish krone in the 1870s. In North German port cities the thaler sat alongside local money such as the Lübeck mark.

English speakers borrowed "dollar" from the Low German and Dutch forms of the word in the sixteenth century and applied it to several large silver coins, most importantly the Spanish piece of eight, a coin of eight reales. The Spanish dollar circulated widely in the American colonies, and when the United States set up its own coinage in 1792 it based the United States dollar on it. The name has since passed to many other currencies, such as the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar. The dollar sign is more usually traced to abbreviations for the Spanish peso than to the thaler itself.

When the German Empire adopted the gold mark in 1873, the thaler was valued at three marks and remained legal tender until the early twentieth century. The Austrian Maria Theresa thaler, dated 1780, continued to be struck long after the empress's death and circulated widely in the Middle East and East Africa into the twentieth century; restrikes bearing the 1780 date are still produced as bullion and souvenir pieces.

Because their silver content was widely known, thalers and their descendants were often weighed and accepted far from the place where they were struck, and in many regions they were hoarded as a store of value as much as they were spent.

• British Museum – Collection online
• American Numismatic Society