1/4 Ecu - Honoré II

Honoré II secured the title "Prince of Monaco" from Louis XIII in 1612 — the first of his dynasty to hold it — after decades of Spanish suzerainty that had kept the Grimaldis nominally subordinate. The coinage he issued from the 1640s onward was a deliberate assertion of that princely rank, struck under rights granted by the French crown. Monaco's mint output from this period is genuinely scarce; the principality's small population and limited commercial reach meant production runs were modest, and attrition over four centuries has been severe.