1 Bazaruco - João V Goa mint

The bazaruco was the smallest denomination in Goa's colonial monetary hierarchy, and by João V's reign it had long been a coin made specifically for local bazaar trade rather than remittance or treasury use. Tin was the practical choice — copper was expensive to import, and the Estado da India was in chronic fiscal difficulty throughout the early eighteenth century following the loss of Persian Gulf trading posts and relentless pressure from Maratha forces on the landward frontiers of Goa.

The Goa mint operated intermittently, its output shaped more by available metal shipments than by scheduled production runs. Tin coins of this type survive in widely varying states of preservation, partly because tin pest — the allotropic degradation that occurs in cooler storage conditions — has destroyed a significant portion of the surviving population over three centuries.