160 Réis - Pedro II Narrow Crown, Bahia Mint

The Bahia mint was established in 1694, making it the first operating mint in colonial Brazil — the earlier Rio de Janeiro facility had been short-lived and largely unsuccessful. This piece falls within the mint's earliest years of production, when Portuguese authorities were scrambling to address a severe shortage of circulating specie in the colony brought on by the explosive growth of inland trade routes toward the interior gold regions.

The "narrow crown" distinction separates this emission from later dies and is the critical variable driving collector differentiation across the Bentes varieties 82.01 through 82.08.