Issuing

Countermark

Resello

A countermark is an official mark applied over an existing note or coin to revalidate it under a new authority. It is not a collector stamp or a Where’s George. In July 1923 the Banco de la República overstamped Medellín gold certificates as provisional notes. In the Thousand Days’ War the Issue Board put the Banco Nacional’s seal on private-bank paper. The countermark acts on paper that had gone out — or was ready to go out; a remainder, by contrast, never circulated.

This collection does not yet publish a 1923 certificate with the overprint “BANCO DE LA REPÚBLICA — BILLETE PROVISIONAL.” A serial is not invented to illustrate it. Later peso oro records (1945, 1944) belong to the regime that began after that bridge, not to the overstamp itself. A TDLR specimen with SPECIMEN ovals is not a successor-authority countermark either: it is a printer’s sample mark.

On coin a countermark may be a punch on a foreign real or peso; a Colombian example of that type is not documented here beyond Hernández and museum sources. The term crosses provisional note, overprint, and handstamp, anchored on the index when they have no article. It keeps one from reading a Philippine VICTORY overprint — a series, not a change of sovereign on the same sheet — as if it were a 1923 countermark.

Until a 1923 certificate is in the catalogue, the countermark is explained from sources in the Colombian case and illustrated with paper that did grow from that regime: circulating peso oro. Inventing a Medellín serial would break the uniqueness rule. The 1980 specimen is linked only to contrast a printer’s overprint with an authority countermark.

See also: Overprint , Provisional note , Handstamp

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