960 Réis - João Prince Regent Countermarked 8 Reales, Cuiaba

Brazil's chronic shortage of silver coinage in the early nineteenth century drove the Crown to a practical solution: foreign coins, primarily Spanish colonial 8 reales, were officially countermarked and placed into domestic circulation at a fixed valuation. The Cuiabá mark is among the rarest of the regional countermarks applied under this program — Cuiabá was a remote mining settlement in Mato Grosso, far from the coastal mints, and coins bearing its punch survive in far smaller numbers than those marked at Rio or Bahia.

João was still Prince Regent in 1820, having ruled from Rio de Janeiro since the Portuguese court fled Napoleon in 1807. He would be proclaimed João VI the following year.