1200 Réis - Luis I Countermarked over 960 Réis - Brazil Colony

Portugal's Azores islands ran chronically short of circulating silver throughout the nineteenth century, and the colonial administration's solution was blunt: take whatever coin was available and stamp it up to a new, locally valid value. This particular piece began life as a 960 Réis struck for Brazilian colonial circulation — itself already a countermarked coin, since the 960 Réis type was produced by overstamping earlier Spanish colonial eight-reales pieces. By 1887, this example carried at least two generations of official re-authorization before reaching an Azorean pocket.

The 1887 countermark is the final Portuguese application under Luís I, applied to already-aged host coins well past their Brazilian relevance.