Ecuadorian Overdate Coins
Ecuadorian Overdate Coins.
Whilst Ecuadorian numismatic history is short, due to its having begun its own coinage only in 1/833, it does have an extraordinary variety of specimens that makes it very rich and interesting for collectors.
It is common to find within a s ingle year some very apparent differences which make each coin individual, varieties such as subtle changes in the design of the shield, errors in the legend such as inverted or altered letters, crude minting, overstrikes, minting errors etc.
Amongst the varieties of overstruck coins there exists a huge range of pieces with overstruck dates which enriches our coinage. We may note that with very few exceptions most of the coins with overstruck dates are found on ½, 1 and 2 decimos pieces from 1891 to 1912. It is very puzzling that most of these coins appear only in these denominations, and even more puzzling that almost all of them relate solely to the mint of Lima. The overstruck dates do not occur in the mints of Birmingham or Philadelphia, and in the case of the mint of Santiago de Chile, Krause World Coins records an overdate only on the ONE DECIMO coin 1889/1789, which, since it relates to an 8 over 7 in the hundreds of the date, is clearly dealing with the correction of a date error. The overdated piece of Santiago de Chile is very scarce, and the NGC Census reports the existence of only one piece.
It is worth mentioning that there exists no record of why these overdates occurred in the Lima Mint, but it had been standard practice on Peruvian coins since the earliest days of the Republic. It is believed that the motive was to optimize the cost of production of the dies. It is thought that the operating cost was less if larger quantities of dies were produced, so that the excess could be used in subsequent years, for which it was necessary only to correct the digits of the date with the year in which Ecuador requested a new supply of coinage. This theory is only a hypothesis of various experienced collectors, because as already mentioned there exists no kind of record which clarifies this mystery, which was very common in the Lima mint, and there is no other logical explanation which allows a second hypothesis.
In this way, by checking the catalogues, we find the following coins where the dates were overstruck for use in subsequent years:
- 2 decimos 1889 TF Lima was overstruck for the years: 1892/89, 1893/89, 1894/89 and 1895/89
- 1 decimo 1894 TF Lima was overstruck for the year 1899/4
- ½ decimo 1893 TF Lima was overstruck for the year 1894/3
- ½ decimo 1897 TF Lima was overstruck for the year 1899/7
- ½ decimo 1902 JF Lima was overstruck for the year 1905/2 (There is no record of this in the NGC CENSUS or PCGS)
There also exist some ½ decimo coins minted in Lima with overstruck dates which show the practice of preparing dies with the last one or two figures of the date left blank, but which still needed to be overstruck because of the change of decade or century, such as:
- ½ decimo JF Lima 1899/87
- ½ decimo JF Lima 1902/802 and 1902/892 (There is no record of 1902/892 in the NGC CENSUS and PCGS)
- ½ decimo JF Lima 1905/805
That this practice of overstriking the decade and century on dies where the final digit or digits were left blank was common practice in the Lima mint is evidenced by the existence in the Peruvian series of ½ dinero 1900/890, 1901/801, 1901/891, 1902/802, 1902/892, 1903/803, 1903/893, 1904/894, 1905/805, 1 dinero 1900/890, 1902/892, 1903/893, sol 1890/80, 1891/81, 1892/82 and many more.
We should mention that there is no record in the NGC and PGC Censuses of certain coins such as the ½ decimos 1902/892 and 1905/2, so there is no confirmation of the existence of these pieces, although both coins are reported in the Krause World Coins catalog.
In addition to the overdated decimal coins, there exist other pieces known with the same type of error corresponding to the pre-decimal coinage, amongst which the following are recorded:
SILVER GOLD
- 2 Reales 1848/7 GJ 8 Escudos 1849/7 GJ - Very rare
- ½ Real 1833 - M over ½ 8 Escudos 1852/0 GJ
- ¼ Real 1843/2 - Very rare 8 Escudos 1855/2 GJ
All these pre-decimal overstruck pieces are confirmed to exist
NGC also mentions the existence of an overstruck 2 reales 1839/8 MV, but there still exists no record in the Census so we are unable to confirm its existence.
Xavier Alban Rubio.
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