São Tomé de 1 Xerafim - João VI Goa mint

The xerafim was a unit of account long used in Portuguese India, but gold issues at this denomination were struck only intermittently — this 1819 piece falls within João VI's reign during one of the more administratively chaotic periods of Portuguese imperial governance, when the court had only recently relocated back to Lisbon from Rio de Janeiro following the Napoleonic disruptions. Goa's mint operated under chronic resource constraints throughout this period, producing small runs of gold coinage that rarely saw wide circulation beyond local trade settlements.

The KM#241 attribution places this among the scarcer João VI Goa types. At 0.4 g, production losses and attrition account for the thin survivor population.