2 Reales Type I Countermark

Costa Rica's early republican coinage was chronically undersupplied, and the government's solution was to countermark Spanish colonial 2 reales hosts — primarily Guatemalan and Mexican cobs and milled coinage — to legitimize them for domestic circulation. The Type I punch, applied at San José between 1841 and 1842, is distinct from the later Type II and is known to appear on a notably wider range of host coins, making die attribution genuinely difficult without examining the host itself.