150 Réis - Alfonso VI Countermarked 2 Reales

Portugal's chronic silver shortage in the early 1660s prompted the Crown to countermark circulating Spanish colonial two-reales rather than mint new domestic coinage outright. The 1663 program, carried out under Afonso VI during the ongoing Restoration War against Spain, applied a crowned countermark to these foreign pieces to legitimize them at 150 réis — a pragmatic solution that also, pointedly, reclaimed Spanish silver as Portuguese currency at a moment when the two crowns were still actively at war.