10 Xerafins São Tomé - José I Damão mint

Damão's mint operated sporadically and under considerable logistical strain — gold supply from the interior was unreliable, and the Estado da India's finances were in chronic disorder by the mid-eighteenth century. The xerafim, originally a silver unit of account inherited from pre-Portuguese Goa, had by José I's reign migrated into gold denominations as the colonial monetary apparatus tried to stabilize exchange against both local currency and the competing Dutch and English trade coinage circulating along the Malabar and Gujarat coasts.

Damão-struck gold of this type is scarcer than Goa-mint equivalents by a considerable margin. The mint there was never a primary facility.