1/2 Gold Louis with 8 Ls and insignia - Louis XIV

The demi-louis d'or of this type was introduced under the monetary reform of 1690, which restructured French gold coinage following decades of repeated devaluations and revaluations that had eroded confidence in the livre tournois. By 1700, Louis XIV was funding the ruinously expensive War of the Spanish Succession, and gold coinage was being called in, re-tariffed upward, and reissued with regularity — a fiscal sleight of hand that kept the treasury nominally solvent while quietly taxing anyone who held coins between edicts.

The "8 Ls" configuration places this among the later variants in the long series of Louis d'or types, distinguished in Gadoury and Droulers by precise die characteristics that serious collectors track closely.