200 Escudos Espingarda, Silver

The Espingarda — a matchlock musket — was one of the most consequential Portuguese exports of the 15th and 16th centuries, arriving in Japan in 1543 aboard a Chinese junk carrying Portuguese traders blown off course to Tanegashima. Within decades, Japanese smiths had reverse-engineered and mass-produced the weapon, fundamentally reshaping warfare across the archipelago in time for the Sengoku period's bloodiest campaigns. This coin belongs to the Portuguese Discoveries series, which INCM issued across the late 1980s and 1990s to mark the quincentenary of the Age of Exploration.

The .925 standard used for this issue distinguishes it from the .500 silver base-metal variants also struck for some denominations in the series.