2 Escudos

Costa Rica's gold coinage of this period was struck at the Casa de Moneda in San José, established in 1825 largely because the newly independent Central American states found it politically untenable to continue sending raw gold north to Guatemala City for minting. The escudo denominations were tied directly to the colonial Spanish monetary system and persisted well past independence simply because no viable replacement had been agreed upon regionally.

By the late 1850s, pressure from British creditors and growing Pacific trade with California gold merchants was already pushing Costa Rica toward a decimal system. The escudo series ended in 1863 when the peso replaced it.