1 Real Type I Countermark

In the early 1840s, Costa Rica lacked the infrastructure to mint its own coinage in sufficient quantity, so the government authorized countermarking foreign silver to legitimize it for domestic circulation. The Type I countermark was applied to cut fractions of larger Spanish colonial cobs and milled reales — raw, irregular pieces that required official sanction before merchants would accept them at face value.

The KM#14 attribution covers host coins of genuinely variable origin, which makes authentication the central challenge with this type. Counterfeits of the countermark itself were documented even at the time.