1 Ducat - Paolo Besso Ferrero-Fieschi

The Ferrero-Fieschi family acquired Masserano through a tangled succession of inheritance and imperial favor, and Paolo Besso ruled a territory so small — a few thousand subjects tucked into the Piedmontese hills — that its mint output was negligible by any standard. These ducats were struck not out of commercial necessity but as an assertion of sovereign prerogative, the physical proof that a prince, however minor, could coin gold. The Holy Roman Empire granted and occasionally revoked such minting rights, and tiny states like Masserano exploited every window of imperial tolerance they had.

The thirty-eight year span of this issue masks what was almost certainly intermittent production rather than continuous striking.