Cruzado Novo - Maria I and Pedro III Low Crown

The joint reign coinage of Maria I and Pedro III occupies an awkward place in Portuguese monetary history. Pedro III was Maria's uncle as well as her husband — a dynastic arrangement of pure political convenience — and he died in 1786 having held only nominal authority, with real power concentrated in Maria from the start. The "Low Crown" variety designation distinguishes this die from the High Crown type struck concurrently, a subtle but catalogued difference in the crown punch that collectors have used to differentiate emissions across the 1778–1784 window.

Maria would later suffer a severe mental collapse, eventually ceding governance to her son João in 1799.