Here is one of the rarest coins of the last of the Jagiellons on the Polish throne.
The "mock" troyak of 1566!
This type of three-penny coin, unique in the minting of the Republic, distinguished by the placement of a fragment of the Psalm of David on the reverse, is well known to collectors. It is regularly encountered at auctions, but almost never from this vintage!
Numismatic archives confirm it emphatically. In our history, the Tykocin Troyak 1566 was offered only 1 time, almost 10 years ago! Even more telling is the Onebid archive, where out of more than 110 listings of the 1565 vintage there are only 2 (sic!) of the 1566 vintage.
The last trojak in the history of the Tykocin mint.
The "mockingbird" trojak is a distinctive issue minted in 1565-1566, the obverse of which is a passage from the second Psalm of David: QVI HABITAT IN COELIS IRRIDEBIT OES. The quote, which was translated as: "he who dwells in heaven will mock them." It was the reason for reading the nature of the issue as mocking.
The coin is still puzzling, against which myths have grown over the years. It was supposed to cause great outrage among the nobility, the clergy and even the dismissal of the mint's administrator Gabriel Tarla. Professor Boris Paszkiewicz believes that its origin is linked to preparations for the Polish-Lithuanian union, when in 1564 the king decided to link the casting of the Lithuanian throne with the election in Poland. In turn, the quotation from the psalm was meant to be a declaration of the ruler's will as God's anointed, signed with his royal monogram.
