1200 Reis - Luiz I countermarked issue with fake stamp

Portugal authorized a countermarking program for the Azores in 1887, applying official stamps to circulating foreign silver to legitimize it for local use. The "fake stamp" designation in this catalog entry signals something more specific: a known class of pieces where the countermark itself is a contemporary forgery, applied fraudulently to pass uncountermarked — and therefore officially invalid — coin at face value. These are not modern fakes of the host coin, but period forgeries of the authorization stamp, which is an important distinction for attribution and valuation.