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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 896622, member: 2100&quot;]Most merchant countermarks in my collection, as well as ones I have ever seen, were by far made on regular coinage. The auction link that sunflower posted in the Coin Chat section shows some examples of merchant countermarks (the auction house calls them counterstamps) on regular coinage. Lot 81 is just one example to save you some scrolling time. That one is also a good example to show that a countermark can add tremendous value to a coin. Lot 81 is a circulated 1828 Bust half. They reference a 2007 auction for that same merchant countermark which brought $8050 (but the host coin was not mentioned).</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Perhaps on a technical point, you may be correct about counterstamps being related to monetary value of an item (although there are merchant counterstamps also, such as chopmarks also). But, where I found the definition, I could not find what they called stampings made by merchants or individuals, so that definition may be a restrictive one unless you were able to find a term applying to the other types. I am a bit tired at the moment, so I may have missed something. Perhaps the merchant name/advertising type should be more correctly called a countermark. I was using the terms interchangably. In Brunk&#039;s reference, he calls everything a countermark, even those made by a monetary authority. I did a little research and could not find clarification as I either found a definition for counterstamp or countermark, but never a definition for both in the same place. Since Brunk probably knows more about these marks than anyone, I will default to his opinion that (while he lists a number of classifications) all of these stampings are considered countermarks - be they made by a government entity, merchant, private individual, or any of the subcategories thereof. </p><p><br /></p><p>A few tidbits from Brunk&#039;s book: He estimates that perhaps as high as 5 percent of the coins circulating in some parts of the U.S. were countermarked with advertising 150 years ago. The British Isles had an even higher percentage in circulation. There were so many in England that a passing reference to the coins stamped by Pear&#039;s Soap was used conversationally when one wanted to describe something of uncountable size.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some merchants stamped large numbers of coins. Richard Devins (Devins &amp; Bolton Montreal) told the American Numismatic Society that he had stamped more than 180,000 coins. To use that as a benchmark for comparing proportions, Pear&#039;s Soap stamped over 250,000, and Lloyd&#039;s Newspaper may have stamped even more.</p><p><br /></p><p>Simple initial countermarks are also listed in his book, but at least two examples of the same stamp must be known.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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