2 Reales Type V Counterstamp

Costa Rica lacked a functioning mint through much of the early republican period and relied heavily on counterstamping foreign silver coinage — primarily Spanish colonial cobs and milled reales — to legitimize their circulation domestically. The Type V counterstamp applied to this piece represents one of several successive punch types used as the government attempted to regulate a monetary supply it could not physically produce itself.

The KM# 89 classification covers a host coin range that varies considerably; the underlying piece matters as much as the stamp for a complete assessment.