Liard of Lyon - Louis XIV

The liard was introduced as a deliberate policy response to the chronic shortage of small divisional coinage that had plagued French commerce for decades. Louis XIV's council standardized the type in 1655, farming production out to provincial mints — Lyon among them — to saturate local markets quickly. The billon standard was kept deliberately low to discourage hoarding and melting.

Lyon's output that year was substantial, and survivors in any condition above heavily worn are modestly scarcer than their Paris counterparts.