20 Soldi - Ferdinando di Borbone

Ferdinando di Borbone ruled Parma as a Spanish Bourbon client under heavy Austrian influence — his wife Maria Amalia was an Austrian archduchess and daughter of Maria Theresa, a dynastic arrangement that made the tiny duchy a diplomatic pressure point between Madrid, Vienna, and Paris simultaneously. The billon coinage of his reign reflects chronic fiscal strain; the alloy's debased silver content was itself a policy response to the duchy's limited monetary resources.

Production ran across fourteen years under at least two different mint administrations in Parma, accounting for the die variation collectors encounter across the date range.