50 Céntimos Counterstamped Coinage - Type VIII

Costa Rica's counterstamped coinage of the early 1920s was a direct response to chronic shortages of small silver denominations and the government's reluctance to commission entirely new dies. Rather than mint fresh coin, the Banco Internacional de Costa Rica authorized the counterstamping of existing foreign silver — predominantly Colombian and other Central American pieces — to legitimize their circulation at fixed tariff values. Type VIII designates a specific host coin and punch combination within this series, which numismatists have spent considerable effort cataloguing given the haphazard nature of the original stamping operations.