At the beginning of the article, it will be helpful to define the term - countermarked on coins.
A countermarked coin is a coin that has had some additional mark or symbol punched into it at some point after it was originally produced while in circulation.
Experts recommend not to use the term countermark and counterstamp as synonyms, but in different contexts. A counterstamp is applied by a die, and by machine to an existing coin, while a countermark is punched onto the coin, mostly by hand, using a punch and a hammer or a primitive hand-operated machine.
Often countermarks are applied by private persons, which were punched - money changers, bankers or shroffs. In contrast the use of counterstamps should be authorized by a local or national Government.
During the last decades of the 19th century the India rupee with the portrait of Queen Victoria (Photo 1) became means of exchange and currency in Tibet. Most traders preferred it to the local tangka coinage or to the silver from China which also circulated in Tibet.
The Indian rupee had the advantage of having a guaranteed fineness (.917 silver) and weight (1 tola = 11.66 g). The Chinese authorities of Szechuan Province, through which most of the tea exported to Tibet passed, felt somewhat-uncomfortable about the widespread use of a foreign coin in Tibet. The vice king of Szechuan, Chun-Hsuen, issued regulations re garding control of the Indian rupee and in 1904 the Chengdu mint began to issue a "rupee" which very closely resembled the Indian "Victoria rupee" which, it was hoped, it would soon replace in Tibet. Victoria's bust was replaced by that of the Chinese emperor Kuangh-hsu. This new rupee is known among collectors as Szechuan rupee and was minted till about 1942 with different types of obverse:
1. Small bust without collar (Photo 2).
2. Small bust with collar (Photo 3).
3. Large bust with collar (Photo 4 and 5).
Interestingly, the portrait of the emperor does not look very solid on coins of late minting, and sometimes we see just a caricature of the portrait of the emperor (I plan to conduct a study of these portraits in a separate article)..
The silver content Szechuan rupees was gradually depressed in course of the min ting from different places during the long period of 40 years. It was stated as 80-90% silver for the "small bust without collar", 60% for the next issue "small bust with collar", and 10-60% for the last issue "large bust”.
Naturally, most of the countermarked Szechuan rupees are of type "large bust without collar", which are the pieces with the lowest silver content.
Since most of the countermarked coins which showing in this article are fairly common without countermarks, we cannot exclude the possibility that some of the countermarks which we list below, may be modern forgeries or fantasies, created to increase the collector value of an otherwise common coin.
So far we do not have a method which allow us to distinguish forgeries or fantasies from genuine countermarks.
Countermarked on Szechuan Rupees can be divided into the following types:
1. Countermarks in Tibetan script:
2. Countermarks in Chinese + Tibetan script:
3. Countermarks in Chinese script:
4. Countermarks in Western script.
5. Several countermarks on the coin.
