X Réis '1/2 vintém' - Pedro Prince Regent

The "meio vintém" was among the smallest silver coins in regular circulation anywhere in seventeenth-century Europe — at under half a gram, it was notoriously easy to lose, clip, and counterfeit. Pedro governed as regent from 1668 following the forced abdication of his brother Afonso VI, whose incapacity he engineered through a combination of political maneuvering and, ultimately, confinement. The coin's five-year window reflects the regency period precisely, before Pedro assumed the throne outright as Pedro II in 1683.