4 Centavos Estrela

Issued by the municipal chamber of Gaia — a city directly across the Douro from Porto — this porcelain piece belongs to a category of Portuguese local emergency coinage produced when metal shortages made conventional minting impractical. The Câmara Municipal issued these tokens under its own authority to keep small transactions moving through local commerce. Porcelain was sourced domestically and fired in standardized batches, which accounts for the minor weight variations seen across surviving examples.