Stuiver 'Cayenne-Stuiver' Countermarks C16 + C20 + fleur-de-lis

Sint Maarten's chronic shortage of small change in the late eighteenth century was never resolved through fresh mintage — the island simply had no mint. Instead, worn billon stuivers circulating in the French and Dutch Caribbean were countermarked and revalued to keep commerce moving. The fleur-de-lis punch places this piece within the French administrative orbit of Saint-Martin, while the C16 and C20 marks indicate sequential revaluations, a pragmatic layering that makes multiply-punched survivors difficult to attribute with precision.

The Scholt gap in the reference sequence signals how poorly documented this particular combination remains.