It can really mean anything; somebody who want to try his letter-punch or whatever. I guess 1 single letter can not be traced back to some meaningfull explanation.
To the best of my knowledge, there's no counterstamped crown coins.
Generally speaking, if governments, or officials acting in their place, do counterstamp coins, they typically use a miniaturised bust of the their monarch (or occasionally other symbols of the “new” country) right in the centre of the “old” design.
So an oddment “P” in a blank part of the field is unlikely to be anything official. As Yvon said, probably just someone messing around with a letter punch. 🤷♂️
Hello — It is indeed a random, private punch mark. A single plain letter is impossible to identify, i.e. what it means (if anything) and who did it.
Even most full names remain unidentified. When there are extra details such as a place or trade (cutler, druggist, etc.) then you're much more likely to ID a countermark.
The main reference is Greg Brunk's big book, Private and Merchant Countermarks, 2nd ed. 2003. Unfortunately he died while finishing his 3rd edition.
He excluded almost all single letter punches and most pairs of initials as they are unidentifiable and would have greatly increased the size of his book for no useful purpose. As it is in the 2nd edition, he has about 10,000 entries.
Second, the mark on it was added later and likely done by persons unknown, likely later as interfering with coinage of the realm was a real offense back then. The coin is dated 1822, but I would not be surprised if that P was still fresh in 1922.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
Indeed George IV and anytime after 1822 — possibly even 2022 though very unlikely.
In the period early 1800s—early 1850s there was a lot of countermarking, especially by merchants. In England the Lloyds “penny” newspapers were among the most prolific (early 1800s) and towards the middle of the century, Pears Soap. The government passed legislation to make this a criminal offence in 1853 and almost all coin defacing stopped.
Now one particular incentive for a private individual to punch or scratch a letter or two was to identify their coins if they were stolen. I actually know one such case for a fact from a British colony in the court case summaries of the Port of Spain Gazette. The guy's place had been burglarized and among items soon after recovered, there were coins with scratches. As a witness he described those scratches to confirm they were his coins.
My Father passed 20 years' ago & had a vast collection of silver that I'm only discovering. I don't believe counterfeit - and the weight is correct - but the P is a definite mystery. Perhaps just the silver value if the P reduces its value … thank you
Three new messages were posted while I wrote mine — I'm rather slow on the phone.
As for value, the punch takes away some value unfortunately. By how much is hard to tell. It is not as bad as a hole, and the punch is small and does not touch the design. It would be more annoying had it been punched on the king's cheek, for example.
