1/2 PARDAU - Maria II Goa Mint

The pardau was a Portuguese colonial denomination with roots stretching back to the sixteenth century, when it served as a unit of account in the Estado da India trade network. By Maria II's reign it had become something of an anachronism — a concession to local commercial custom in Goa rather than an integration into the metropolitan monetary system. The Goa Mint operated under chronic supply constraints throughout the 1840s, dependent on silver stocks that arrived irregularly by sea.

KM#271 is notably scarce relative to other Goan colonial issues of the period, with surviving examples frequently showing uneven luster from inconsistent planchet preparation at the mint.