40 Batzens Counterstamped

During the upheaval following the Napoleonic Wars, Bern faced a severe shortage of large-denomination silver coinage. Rather than strike an entirely new issue, the canton authorized the counterstamping of existing foreign thalers — primarily Brabant and French écus — circulating within its borders, legitimizing them at 40 Batzen and bringing them formally into the local monetary system. It was an expedient solution typical of cash-strapped post-war cantonal administrations across Switzerland.

The counterstamp itself, applied between 1816 and 1819, is the coin's primary collectible attribute. Host coin identity matters considerably to value here.