Official countermarks on coins

Started by <k>, December 25, 2019, 01:44:32 PM

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<k>

Elsewhere on this forum, we have a sub-board called Private countermarks. Our forum member brandm24 is fascinated by these acts of apparent vandalism. He is part detective, part urban anthropologist, who goes out into the field, in order to research the reasons behind the defacement of these coins and find out just how many different subjects they cover. For me, these defacements are the work of hooligans carrying out acts of vandalism, and brandm24 is a sociologist of numismatic vandalism. But each to his own.

Recently I noticed that some Tongan collector coins of 1967 had been officially countermarked. I wonder how many examples of official countermarks exist, and I invite you to contribute to this topic.

 
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<k>

#1
Tonga 50 seniti 1967-countermark.jpg


Tonga 50 seniti 1967--countermark.jpg


Tonga, 50 seniti, 1967.  Queen Salote.  Countermark: "IN MEMORIAM 1965-1970".

Some of these 1967 commemorative coins were officially gold-plated and countermarked in 1970.
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<k>

#2
Tonga 1 pa'anga 1967-countermark.jpg


Tonga 1 pa'anga 1967.jpg

Tonga, 1 pa'anga, 1967, with countermark.


This coin commemorated the 50th birthday of King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV.

The countermark reads: "1918 TT IV 1968".
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andyg

this is the first that springs to mind - a 2 Decimes revalued to 1 Decime.
UN overstruck over 2, with the S punched out from Decimes.
This must have taken quite some effort - why did they not make new ones....?
always willing to trade modern UK coins for modern coins from elsewhere....

Figleaf

Speed and economy.

The new republic was threatened by a mighty coterie of kings, emperors and lesser nobility. This was directly related to the execution of Louis XVI. The French republic scored one victory after another (Holy Roman empire, Prussia, French royalists, Italy, most German territories West of the Rhine, the Netherlands' republic, Austrian Netherlands) but the finances were running short. Moreover, the Directory had defaulted on debt incurred by the royals, cutting off access to new credits. Issuing new assignats would have caused a crisis, so the only choice was to issue good copper to pay the soldiers.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

<k>

Quote from: andyg on December 25, 2019, 02:42:55 PM
this is the first that springs to mind - a 2 Decimes revalued to 1 Decime.

Devaluation by countermark. A new concept for me.
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brandm24

I'm the "sociologist of numismatic vandalism" referred to in post #1 which I suppose would entitle me to be addressed as Dr. so and so, but being the unassuming person I am, I prefer to be called Bruce.  ;D

Putting that aside, I've little experience in studying official countermarks. My main interest is with US counterstamps, a country that has never revalued currency that I'm aware of. There are private issues of course, some even bordering on official, but most are US coins or tokens revalued by private enterprise.

The John B. Schiller revaluations could be considered one bordering on "official", but still not there. The Schiller issues have a long  and interesting story to tell. They were issued during a very chaotic period in American history so have some claim to fit either category. This article explains it better than I ever could. Comments are much appreciated.
         
THE J.B. SCHILLER NEW ORLEANS COUNTERSTAMP

The other pieces that come to mind are tokens issued by Union Sutler's during the American Civil War. While considered tokens, they were real money to the soldiers who were paid with them. Sutlers were private merchants appointed by the government to sell goods to individual regiments. Sounds like a mix of private and official does it not? In any case, they were at times revalued by stamping a new value over the old one.

Bruce
Always Faithful

<k>

Commercial collector issues apart then, it seems that official countermarks are restricted to times of turmoil. That seems logical, since countermarks represent makeshift methods.
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Figleaf

I liked the Schiller article, but would like to offer an alternative view of Schiller's motivation, one more often seen in history.

While relative scarcity of official coin is a sine qua non, profit, rather than providing a social service can play a decisive role in the decision to create counterstamped emergency coinage. The profit is quite obvious in this case: every counterstamped cent was worth 10 cents within the Schiller premises. Therefore, Schiller made a profit from three sources:

  • He obtained a free and interest free loan of nine cents for every counterstamped coin.
  • Every counterstamped coin that was taken out of the house ran the risk of not being returned, giving him a chance of a one time nine cents profit for an investment of one cent.
  • When the federal troops banned confederate currency, he could disavow his counterstamped coins altogether.
There was the cost of making the counterpunches, of course, but he probably produced the coins and notes at home. Mutatis mutandis for the emergency notes.

This also explains how he "somehow" survived the episode. He actually fared well, he could portray himself as socially moved to issue the coins and notes, raked in a profit and point at the federal regulations when the time came to take them back. Anyway, since the coins and notes are so scarce, it is likely that small sums only were involved.

@ <k>, times of change, rather than times of turmoil. It is quite possible to reform a coin system and counterstamp the old coins to make them fit into the new system. Example: lightweight Dutch 6 duit pieces were counterstamped to devalue them to 5 duits. Unstamped pieces were declared worthless.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

brandm24

No doubt that Schiller was in it for the profit, not only from the inflated value of his makeshift coinage but also for the fact that it made selling a bit easier. I'm not sure how "socially moved" he was, but we can't know his motivation other than in a business sense.

The sutler tokens are probably closer to official than Schiller's tokens. They had the pieces made very cheaply and assigned whatever value they wanted. Very little of what they sold or how they conducted their business was regulated by the government. The only thing that kept them in check to a degree was the fact that they were selling to a group of heavily armed men. Don't want to irritate them too much.

Bruce
Always Faithful

eurocoin

In 2015, Somalia released a silver bullion coin with a face value of 100 shillings depicting an elephant. Mistakenly on a part of the mintage, the reverse of the gold version of this coin was used. A small countermark Ag was stamped over the letter u in Au to 'correct' the mistake.




brandm24

That's interesting, eurocoin. I sometimes wonder how such errors can occur, but I suppose as long as humans are involved it's inevitable. The good part is that they recognized the error and corrected it. Do you know how many were struck this way?

Bruce
Always Faithful

eurocoin

#12
Quote from: brandm24 on January 15, 2020, 06:33:49 PM
That's interesting, eurocoin. I sometimes wonder how such errors can occur, but I suppose as long as humans are involved it's inevitable. The good part is that they recognized the error and corrected it. Do you know how many were struck this way?

Bruce

1,500 of these mule errors were produced of which 1,000 pieces were destroyed. The remaining 500 were countermarked to correct the mistake.

brandm24

Likely there's some value to the 500 that were corrected. More so if any of the original error pieces "escaped" the melting pot, I would think. A very nice elephant portrait, by the way.

Bruce
Always Faithful