1887/1923 Costa Rican 25-centavos/50-centimos

[villa66]

The host coin here was an 1887 25-centavos from Costa Rica. There were originally two varieties of the 1887 25-centavo, with this being cataloged by Krause as KM127.2 (“9 Ds G W”).

As you can see, this 1887 25-centavo was revalued as a part of Costa Rica’s 1923-4 coinage reform by counterstamping it with the new date of 1923, and the new value (and new unit!) of 50-centimos. Some 1,866,000 of the old ¼-peso and 25-centavo coins (dated 1850-1893) were converted into 1923 50-centimos pieces like this one.

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[villa66]

An 1889 25-centavos struck for Costa Rica at the Heaton mint in Birmingham, England. This coin is of a type similar to the 25-centavo piece posted above that was reworked during Costa Rica’s 1923-4 coinage reform.

This particular coin, despite being one of the types subject to the rework, obviously escaped the counterstamping that converted so many of its siblings into 50-centimos pieces. And then—instead of getting that new career as a 1923 50-centimos piece—it retired early, as an 1889 25-centavo.

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[Eurorolle]

Ja, wenn das so ist- ok

[villa66]

Costa Rica’s monetary reform caused this 1903 50-centimos to be redenominated as a 1-colon piece in 1923. This silver piece (29mm, 10gr, .900) is the big brother of the Costa Rican counterstamp 0f 1887/1923 earlier in the thread.

These 1903 50-centimos pieces were struck at both San José and Philadelphia—the coins are said to be indistinguishable as to mint—and were among the 460,000 (Krause says 421,810) Costa Rican 50-centavos and 50-centimos pieces dated between 1880 and 1918 to be employed as “host coins” for the 1923 1-colon pieces created by counterstamping.

How long these silver counterstamps remained in circulation I cannot say, but the first purpose-struck 1-colon pieces are the 350,000 copper-nickel coins minted at Philadelphia in 1936—but dated 1935.

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