Wow! It is another great one. I really dig coins from this era and these you have gotten with the counterstamps are just fantastic!
i had to look up monserrat and cayenne. interesting however...looks like both changed hands between european colonial powers around the time the coin was minted. does the stamp have anything to do with that?
In a sense they are... but in these cases they were officially sanctioned by the ruling government and used to re-denominate the coinage for use as it's own. The marking is known and documented as being used for that purpose.
I agree with so few things done by slabbers but, IMHO, they got this right. This countermark is the coin being graded. The undertype is the flan on which it was struck. The c/s is not damage; it is what makes the coin. You can tell this because the label does not read 1789A Cayenne 2S with undated Montserrat 1.5P C/S. Now there is a question how the label would have been different if the c/s had been the most perfectly sharp example ever seen but the host coin were worn to VG before the c/s was applied. Perhaps a second question would be how that same difference would affect the potential sales value/demand for the item.
