1792-1796 Restrike Maria Theresia Thaler

The new year has started out well after more than five years of hunting I can knock another off my hunt list. I obtained this coin a couple of weeks ago and have spent my time confirming its genuine. Its a Guenzburg strike but is different to standard in that it has the mint signature TS-IF on the reverse and instead of the Burgau arms in has the arms of Upper Austria in the fourth quadrant. The punches for this variety were cut in Vienna. I suspect, but still need to confirm, that this family of Guenzburg varieties(TS-IF) were the result of an an unsuccessful attempt to bring Guenzburg into line with the then standard form of the MTT.

I am sorry for the photoquality I used the camera flash and the coin appears much more silver than it is in reality (very darkly toned)

Some of you will look at the Rim Pattern on the reverse and be a little concerned....actually it is not uncommon on genuine MTT. Struck with out a collar it was not uncommon for MTT of this period to be off centre.In this case both sides are off centre but the Die for the Reverse shows some field on the off side of the rims decoration. Its not clear in these photos but both sides are equally off center. This broken "M" sub variety gives clues to a More normal SF strike with exactly the same damaged M (Hafner 30) obviously the same letter punch was used for both coins. Hafner suggests,with a question mark, Hafner 30 dates to 1790. But the damaged M on this coin would date it to a little later( both the SF and TS-IF coins were produced concurrently)

Here are the photos