1/2 Bazaruco - Filipe II Goa mint

The bazaruco was the lowest denomination in Portuguese India's monetary hierarchy, tariffed against silver xerafins and gold pardaus at rates that shifted constantly with metal supplies and local demand. Filipe II — Felipe III of Spain, the second of the Portuguese Filipes following the 1580 Iberian Union — maintained the Goa mint as a going concern largely because the calain coinage was essential for petty trade in the bazaars that gave the coin its name. Spanish colonial administration had little interest in reforming what worked.

Calain, a tin-lead alloy sourced partly through the Estado da India's trade networks in Southeast Asia, was notoriously difficult to strike cleanly, and surviving pieces of this type almost universally show some degree of surface porosity or casting irregularity from the alloy itself rather than from wear.