Obol - James I Barcelona

James I of Aragon — "the Conqueror" — reigned for over six decades, the longest of any Iberian medieval monarch, and spent much of it in near-constant military campaigning: the conquest of Majorca in 1229, Valencia by 1238, and Murcia by the 1260s. The Barcelona mint operated throughout under the authority of the Principality, striking petty billon coinage to meet the ordinary transactional needs of a rapidly expanding Crown of Aragon. The quarter-century span of this type makes precise dating within the reign essentially impossible without die study.