2 Reales - Felipe IV Provisional countermarked coinage

In 1663, the Captaincy General of Guatemala authorized a countermark program in direct response to the macuquina fraud crisis sweeping Spanish colonial mints. Assayers at Mexico City and Potosí had been filing silver from cob coinage before it entered circulation — a scandal that reached the crown and triggered emergency remediation orders across the empire. Guatemala's solution was to countermark existing 2 reales pieces as a guarantee of locally verified weight and fineness, effectively re-certifying coinage that had already been questioned.

KM#A1 is among the earliest attributed Guatemalan countermark types, making verified examples genuinely scarce.