Official "Post A Counterstamp" Thread....

For reference I've had one counterstamp punch made. The seller was on ebay, named hammerpunch1. Quick, accurate and the punch has held up so far over 2,000 LMCs stamped and counting.

Here's one that has eluded me for a long time. Was really happy to finally find one.

@nautilator .... Looks to me like you may have a "double maverick" on your hands. I suspect that the S. & I. counterstamp was first applied, and the "Good For" die followed. I'm guessing from the style that the "Good For" die was made between 1890-1910 and likely applied around that time. A drink or a cigar could generally be had for a nickel in that era. It could have been a trial strike, as you say, to see how the dies or letter punches looked. Since care was taken to separate the two, differing stamps, I'm guessing that your token may have been used in trade. Of course, there's always the possibility that this amateurish token could have been someone's science project in the 1930's or much later. No way of telling ....

Foreign coins and tokens were legal tender in the U.S., prior to the Civil War, and they continued to circulate as specie for many decades thereafter. They were often counterstamped with merchant advertising as well as many other reasons. Spanish coins were the most often seen "little billboards." Here's one the earliest "Good For" pieces of which I'm aware - possibly even the first of this genre.

The host coin pictured below is an 1804 two real piece. This merchant, William Pierce, was a Boston apothecary who sold a variety of medicines and sundries. He alleged that his hair tonic had medicinal properties and could cure baldness, among other maladies. There are a dozen or so known pieces that were stamped by Pierce; all, apparently done in the mid 1850's.

lol, jbuck. But I don't think I'll be sticking around here for very long. Gotta get back to quite a few other things, actually.

Exoguy: do you happen to know of any counterstamp "good for" coins like that for sale? I consider those to be an unusual material/transmission mechanism and would keep an eye on those if they weren't too much.

I took a look on the token catalog for similar style things, and found this (among others):


In this particular one, it looks like the good for at bar part was applied first, and then the person's initials were added later. ...or was it the other way around? Well, it looks like it was a thing back then, and for whatever reason someone did it on a Swedish coin instead of a blank.

That is okay. We will take what we can get.

Ha! Good one David!