Trigueiros, António Miguel

António M. Trigueiros was born in Coimbra in 1944 and graduated in Chemical Engineering in 1971. Afterwards, he served in the Navy as a Reserve Officer from 1971 to 1974. In 1976, he started working for the National Petrochemical Company. In addition to his work as a chemical engineer, Trigueiros, from a young age, devoted much of his time to the study of Portuguese monetary history and published numerous papers in Portugal and abroad.

From 1974 to 1985, Trigueiros was director and editor of the Portuguese numismatic magazine MOEDA.

In 1976, at the request of the Ministry of Finance, he wrote a study that led to the introduction of collector coins in Portugal.

In 1985, he was appointed director of the mint’s Coin and Medal Department. There he made a shift away from the understanding of coins as objects of value towards the idea that coins convey messages about a country’s culture.

Trigueiros co-authored the last reform of the Portuguese Escudo coinage system between 1986 and 1991 and wrote almost all coin legislation adopted between 1983 and 1997.

From 1987 to 2001, Trigueiros was a member of the National Committee for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries. During this time, he prepared and coordinated the corresponding monetary programme commemorating the Golden Age of the Portuguese Discoveries.

In 1998, he became advisor to the Chairman of Collections Philae SA, a private direct sales company. There he planned new numismatic products. He retired in 2009.

In 2010, Trigueiros founded “Estudos de Numismática.org”, a non-profit organization that makes scholarly works by Portuguese authors available free of charge.

For his contribution to the cultural and historical appreciation of modern coinage, António Miguel Trigueiros was awarded the Vreneli Prize in Basel in 1992.

In 2019, he was appointed honorary member of the Portuguese Academy of History.

If you would like to contact António Miguel Trigueiros, please write him an email.

Here you can find the research papers written by António Miguel Trigueiros.

Recently, his latest book on the patron saint of Portugal and Brazil in numismatics was published.