This week Godot & Fils is offering for sale a magnificent Portuguese colonial coin from Brazil. It is a 1600 Réis coin of King Joseph I (1750-1777) minted in Rio de Janeiro in 1763.
 
It weighs 3.47 grams and has a diameter of 20 millimetres. The obverse shows the Portuguese king laurelled on the right, while the reverse shows the royal arms.
 
This 18th-century coin was produced in the context of the conquest of the Americas by European powers such as Portugal.
Faced with the influx of wealth and the quantities of gold that were seized from the conquered populations, the Portuguese minted a large number of coins, such as the 1600 Réis coin of King Joseph I shown here.

The quantities of gold discovered and European greed are no strangers to the famous myth of Eldorado (the golden one), which was established very early on with the arrival of the first settlers from the old continent. Monetary gold, of great purity, comes mainly from Brazil, from the Minas Gerais region. 
 
The Real was Brazil's first official currency, introduced by the Portuguese and Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century. The word "real" means "royal" in Portuguese, and is also the name of the currency in circulation in Portugal from 1400 until the 1900s. The Réal was therefore used from the very beginning of the colonisation of Brazil.
 
In short, the 1600 Réis coin is part of the fascinating and special context of the history of the discovery of the Americas by the Europeans.
 
Discover this symbolic coin online this week.
 
Happy shopping on our site, and see you soon at Godot & Fils !