Hallo gentlemen. I got an interesting coin today. It is 50 centimos of the Republic of Costa-Rica with the date "1923". This date and face value were counterstamped on 25 centavos 1893. As I know, it was the period of inflation in that small country. Anyway, I like the design very much.
That is strange, both the date and denomination are raised on every example of this series of counterstamped coinage I have ever seen. They used a punch with the lettering and circle on both sides incuse, so the fields of the counterstamp are incuse and the lettering and circle raised on the actual coin.
It would appear that the Monetary Authority used the 25 Centavos of 1893 which had the same weight 6.3 gms and identical composition of Ag 0.75. Rather than inflation being the culprit, perhaps the Monetary Authority ran out of silver. Rather than hyperinflation in the early 1920s, Costa Rica was suffering from the collapse of coffee prices its main foreign exchange earning resource. I suspect that the country could not import silver from Mexico or Chile. Just an educated guess!
