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1 Bastardo - João III
| Issuer | Portuguese Malacca |
|---|---|
| Year | 1521-1557 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Bastardo (⅙) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Central field bears the Portuguese royal arms — a shield quartered with the quinas (five escutcheons) — enclosed within a plain rectangular cartouche. The shield is flanked on each side by a vertical row of three pellets, with an additional pellet positioned above the cartouche, all contained within a double linear border. The overall design is rendered in a simplified, low-relief style characteristic of colonial tin-lead coinage struck for circulation in Portuguese Malacca. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Central device depicts the Portuguese armillary sphere, rendered as a globe encircled by overlapping latitude and longitude bands with a prominent diagonal band — the symbol of King Manuel I adopted as the personal emblem of the Portuguese Crown and widely employed on colonial coinage. The sphere is presented in low relief within a double circular border that follows the irregular flan. The design is boldly struck despite the crude, cast nature of the calin flan. |
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| Additional information |
The bastardo was one of several fractional denominations struck by the Portuguese at Malacca after Afonso de Albuquerque seized the port in 1511, integrating the mint into a colonial monetary system designed to displace the local tin coinage that had circulated there for generations. Calin — a local tin-lead alloy — was the only practical choice; it was what the Malay economy ran on, and Portuguese administrators understood that forcing a foreign metal on the spice trade's central entrepôt would have been commercially ruinous.
The name bastardo itself signals ambiguity: neither a clean fraction nor a round value, it occupied an awkward middle position in the Portuguese colonial tariff schedule.