1/4 Patagon - Philip IV

Luxembourg's mint output during Philip IV's reign was consistently small relative to the major Netherlands mints at Antwerp or Bruges, making provincial issues from this location scarcer in surviving numbers. The Patagon series itself had been introduced under Albrecht and Isabella in 1612 as a heavy silver trade coin designed to compete with the Dutch rijksdaalder across northern European markets — by 1632, the Spanish crown was funding an increasingly desperate military campaign in the Thirty Years' War, and mint revenues from the southern Netherlands provinces were being drawn hard into that effort.