Overview

This site was created in an effort to list, in chronological order, all dies used in the mintage of the 1 skilling 1771. Although our work is not yet complete (will it ever be?), we have so far identified and listed 585 obverse and 642 reverse dies, making up 989 die combinations.
Over time, the classification system used on this site has been adopted as a reference by collectors, numismatic publications and auction houses, including Dansk Numismatisk Forening and Bruun Rasmussen. We are grateful that the work has proved useful in identifying and describing individual die combinations of the 1 skilling 1771.
We would like to thank Peter Poulsen for allowing us to use several of his coin scans, and Frank Pedersen for providing valuable new insights into the chronology and origin of the coins. Many thanks also to Bjørn Kristian Wang and Jakob Rye for their much-appreciated contributions.

Mintage

With a total mintage of more than 54 million coins, the 1 skilling 1771 is one of the most common 18th-century coins found among collectors. Producing such a large number of coins probably required more than 650 pairs of dies, resulting in close to a thousand different variations over the 16-year period from 1771 to 1786.
The coins were minted in three locations: Altona, Copenhagen and Kongsberg. Five different die cutters were probably involved: Johan Henrik Wolff, Johan Ephraim Bauert, Georg Valentin Bauert, Anders Lunde and Nicolai Wilhelm Wright.
Although we have a good idea of where and when the various types were minted, some details remain unresolved. Wilcke's Kurantmønten 1726–1788 has traditionally been the standard source for mintage figures, but some of his conclusions appear to have been incorrect. Frank Pedersen's CHRISTIAN DEN VII'S MØNTER, 1766–1808/1812 provides an updated overview that better matches our own observations from more than 7,000 coins.
The table below combines Pedersen's findings with our own detailed study of reverse-die fonts and provides a fairly accurate overview of where and when the 1771 skilling coins were minted. It also highlights the large productivity gap between Altona and the other mints, with Altona consistently producing substantially more coins per die.