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A rather interesting overstruck coin from Azores 1795


gxseries

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Obtained a rather interesting overstruck coin for my world overstruck collection.

This coin is from Azores - a Portuguese colony which is about 1000 miles from Portugal. As of why Portugese coinage was not used and Azores decided to have her own coinage, I do not know.

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This is a Azores 1795 10 reals overstruck over Portugal 1791 - 1799 5 reals. If I am not mistaken, essentially all Azores denomination during this time was doubled using the same copper content, i.e. 5 reals got overstruck as 10 reals, 10 reals as 20 reals. Maybe there was a critcial shortage of coins and therefore a fair number had to be imported from Portugal and then re-denomitized?

Would like to know the history of this.

The rest of my overstruck coin collection can be seen here:
http://gxseries.com/numis/overstrike/world_overstrike.htm

 

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Here is my thinking :-). Azores, Angola, Mozambique and Brazil were all governed by the same administrative principles, including monetary policy, not unlike British at the later times - 19'th century anchor dollars, Jersey issues and such. In a wayRemember that most of the large scale trade, if done in cash, was done in gold and silver, and was to be shipped back to Portugal for reminting into crown currency. Local copper money was issued to facilitate exclusively local trade and it was usually in limited quantities. I don't know/guess why - maybe so that the local government will exercise self restrain in spending, maybe because the cost of setting up the mint or shipping from the metropolis was too costly. Foreign money was usually prohibited from circulation as it showed the weakness of the governing regime or was at least counter marked. and was to be shipped back to Portugal. Exportation of the currency was also officially forbidden, however lot of the coinage shipped away with sailors.

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