500 Réis - Afonso VI Countermarked 400 Réis

This piece began life as a Portuguese 400 Réis macuçço — crudely struck hammered silver of the type produced in Brazilian colonial mints at Bahia — before being officially countermarked to circulate at the elevated value of 500 Réis under a 1663 royal order issued in the name of Afonso VI. The revaluation was a fiscal maneuver to retain silver in the colony, which was hemorrhaging coinage to Portugal and to contraband trade networks across the Atlantic.

Locating a specimen where both the host coin and the applied countermark are legible is genuinely difficult. The base macuçços were irregular flans to begin with.