4 Maravedis - Felipe IV countermark

This piece belongs to one of the most chaotic episodes in Castilian monetary history. By the mid-17th century, the crown had debased, revalued, and countermarked its own copper and billon coinage so repeatedly that ordinary commerce was grinding toward paralysis. The 1658–1659 countermark was applied to already-circulating pieces as part of yet another royal pragmatic — an attempt to re-tariff existing coins rather than strike new ones, sparing a treasury exhausted by the Thirty Years' War and ongoing conflict with France and Portugal.

The countermarking operations were carried out at multiple Castilian mints simultaneously, which accounts for the inconsistency in strike quality and placement found across surviving examples.