Historical currency areas were not as strongly demarcated from their neighbours as we know them from modern times. The usual main source for the reconstruction of historical coin circulation in numismatics is coin finds. However, for various reasons, too few finds have been documented and published to provide a meaningful picture of Tyrol in the 16th century. It is therefore necessary to fall back on a different category of sources.
The most easily accessible written sources are the so-called coin mandates. These were publicly publicised information posters on how to deal with foreign coins. They became established in printed form in Tyrol from the 1520s. As legal texts, they primarily depict a normative picture of the circulation of coins. However, following the pattern of medieval documents, their narratio provides the actual information on the actual conditions. Together with the knowledge of coin production in Tyrol, a first sketch of the coin circulation can be drawn.