2 Reales 1743 Pillar Coin With Countermark

Bienvenido, Gonsalo.

Someone more knowledgeable than I will be along soon to answer you question. Just wanted to be the first to welcome you to our happy forum.

Welcome Gonzalo!

t0rress, many coins throughout the history were countermarked by different governments who thus "authorized" otherwise foreign coins to be a legal tender on their territory.

Welcome Gonzalo, I know very little about countermarks/stamps, but I am also waiting for someone to i.d. this one! I don't think I have ever seen it before. It looks like the "Jerusalem Cross" seen on so many Spanish coins, but what are the 4 circles? It looks very much like the design on this coin:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_exx06B1Zo...PICT4158.jpg

My initial reaction was Portugal too, but I looked at the Portuguese and its colonial coins and I didn't see any countermark resembling this. Yours looks too "old" and crude for Portugal.

Can it be a merchant or a personal countermark?

I have no clue

Quote: "I was hoping someone would chime in on the authenticity of the host coin."

That's interesting, I had not thought of that......it does have a odd brown color with some form of gold paint/brass right where the c/m is placed.
Gonzalo, is this a trick of the photograph or is this coin maybe holed and plugged? Also, can you show us a close up of the edge? Most fakes of 2Reales that I have seen are copper/brass w/silver plateing, unless its some form of modern/China fake.

I hate to even mention this .....BUT! While visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico I did happen across a jewelry shop that had some very interesting silver bars and rounds as jewery. They had this same cross, but where the circles are they had "S,F,N,M". The shop owner said that a local artist found some old documentation(?), that in the early 1820's Santa Fe had taken Spanish coins/cobs and pounded out the images and placed this countermark/stamp on their silver. This silver was then traded to the new group of traders coming in from America, and with traders from Mexico.
It is historical fact that with the shortage of silver/gold coins in the Western United States area in the 1820's, many St. Louis traders set out for Taos and Santa Fe, NM blazing the Sante Fe and Cimmoran Trails. There are even newspaper accounts of these traders returning to St. Louis and paying back their sponcers, bankers, by cutting open bags of silver coins right out in the streets!