Pul countermarked Caffa's 'Gate'

Caffa — the Genoese colony on Crimea's southern coast — operated under Mongol suzerainty for much of the 14th and 15th centuries, and local countermarking of Tatar puls was a practical administrative response to fluctuating monetary agreements between the commune and the khans of the Golden Horde. The 'Gate' punch specifically has been linked to Caffa's municipal authority asserting revalidation rights over coins already in circulation, effectively taxing or guaranteeing the local exchange value without producing new flans.

Retowski's 1905 corpus remains the foundational reference for Caffan countermarks, and attribution disputes for borderline specimens persist among specialists to this day.