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The year 1486 is a milestone in the history of both Schneeberg and the Tyrol.
In Schneeberg, the highest number of workers ever employed was recorded in that year – one thousand of them. And at Hall, near Innsbruck, Archduke Sigismund coined the first silver thaler. These two facts do have something in common: the rise of Schneeberg was due to the great need for lead in the Schwaz silver mines in the low Inn valley. The silver-bearing lead of Schneeberg was particularly suitable for separating the Schwaz tetrahedrite, from which large quantities of excellent silver could be extracted. The mule-track which crossed the Schneebergscharte or the Sandjoch, used to transport ore to Ridnauntal and then across the Brenner pass, was the equivalent of a modern motorway. The political centre of the Tyrol Land had been transferred from Meran to Innsbruck, and the mint had also been transferred, as early as 1477, from Meran to Hall, near Innsbruck. The most important coins dominating the world economy of those times were made of gold, mainly the florin (abbreviated to fl.) from Florence, but also the Venetian Zecchinen (sequin) and the florin of the Rhine Electors.
Although the Tyrol had an enormous quantity of silver available, gold was very scarce, and minting gold coins was too expensive for the local princes. The logical consequence was that Archduke Sigismund of the Tyrol (also called, after his death, ‘Sigismund the Wealthy’) in 1486 authorized the minting of the first large silver coin, the value of which corresponded to that of a gold florin and which was thus called Guldiner. As if the whole world of those times had been expecting this simple revolution in the monetary system, the minting of the Guldiner was soon adopted in mints from Spain to Hungary. In particular, the mint of Joachimstal, in Bohemia, distinguished itself for its large-scale minting of this coin, called Joachimstaler and later, more simply, taller (Tal = valley). Around 1540, the name taller for the coin created in the Tyrol became accepted everywhere and for centuries dominated the money market. The word is still used, every day, all over the world – it is now better known as the American dollar!