Andorra issued its first domestic coinage only in 1976, having relied on French and Spanish currency for centuries under the peculiar dual-sovereignty arrangement that splits suzerainty between the French head of state and the Bishop of Urgell. Joan Martí i Alanis, who held the episcopal co-princeship from 1971 to 2003, appears on this 1981 piece representing the ecclesiastical half of that arrangement — an 800-year-old feudal structure still producing legal tender coinage in the final decades of the twentieth century.
The .918 fineness mirrors traditional British sovereign gold standard, almost certainly a deliberate choice given the coin's collector-market orientation.
Andorra issued its first domestic coinage only in 1976, having relied on French and Spanish currency for centuries under the peculiar dual-sovereignty arrangement that splits suzerainty between the French head of state and the Bishop of Urgell. Joan Martí i Alanis, who held the episcopal co-princeship from 1971 to 2003, appears on this 1981 piece representing the ecclesiastical half of that arrangement — an 800-year-old feudal structure still producing legal tender coinage in the final decades of the twentieth century.
The .918 fineness mirrors traditional British sovereign gold standard, almost certainly a deliberate choice given the coin's collector-market orientation.