1/2 Leal - João III Goa mint

João III inherited Portuguese India at its most administratively chaotic — Goa had been seized by Albuquerque only a decade earlier, and the colonial mint there was still improvising both its procedures and its denominations. The leal itself was a fractional unit borrowed awkwardly from the metropolitan system and redenominated for local commerce, intended primarily to facilitate small transactions with Indian merchants who had little use for European coin conventions.

Gomes J3 09.01 is among the scarcer of João III's Indian copper issues, with surfaces that typically show the rough fabric expected of a colonial operation working without the die-cutting infrastructure available in Lisbon.