Albrecht Wenceslas Eusebius of Wallenstein (b.1583 – d. 1634) was a talented soldier and thanks to his shrewd policy and extraordinary military skills he made an extraordinary career – from an insignificant Czech nobleman he made it to the top and became one of the most powerful figures of the thirty-year war. He was raised to the Czech peerage and later on earned the title of imperial duke, was given high titles and major privileges. Using one of them – the minting privilege – he began to strike coins in the mints in Jičín and Zaháň (Sagan). He struck standard nominal coins of the period, however most of them – including duke Albrecht’s thaler was primarily of representative and prestigious nature – because of scarcity of the metal necessary for coinage. The only nominal coin that was more widely used in circulation was the three-kreutzer.