Luigino - Giovanni Andrea III Doria

The luigino was not a coin born from local necessity but from deliberate exploitation of Levantine trade. In the 1660s, dozens of small Italian lordships — Loano among them — minted these lightweight silver pieces specifically for export to the Ottoman Empire, where French-style coinage was accepted in commerce. The coins were struck underweight relative to genuine French issues, generating immediate profit on every shipment east. France eventually pressured the practice into collapse, but the window of roughly a decade produced an enormous variety of types across countless petty issuers.

Giovanni Andrea III Doria held Loano as a Genoese feudatory. The 1665 dating places this piece near the height of the luigino trade.