My World Crown Affair
18th Cent, Livorno pezza della rosa

Owner Comments:

Pezza della Rosa or Rose Dollar from Livorno in the Italian state of Tuscany. Interestingly, it's one of several crown sized silver coins that were minted there. Ducats or piastra were made to trade on par with the high value ducatons from the Dutch Republic. Talleros had a value equal to the thalers of the German states. The pezza della rosa, also known as pezza da otto reali, was the local equivalent of the Spanish 8 reales. As an important port and trading center, having local coins with similar values to foreign coins eased commerce and gave the ruler the seigniorage, the profit on the difference between the face value and cost to produce the coins.

My example is from 1707, during the reign of Cosimo III, the penultimate head of the famous Medici family.