Morgan Dollars issued from Puerto Rico?

I ran across the following Numista Catalog Page:  N#25333

I noticed that Puerto Rico is listed as the Issuer for a United States Morgan Dollar.  The Morgan Dollar in the picture is clearly marked with an "S" Mint Mark on the Reverse which stands for "San Francisco".

I'm aware that in the late 1800's Puerto Rico didn't have a coin of its own and Puerto Rico would counterstamp coins from other countries with a Fleur-De-Lis symbol and then circulate those coins locally.  This is discussed by PCGS here:  https://www.pcgs.com/news/the-rich-history-of-puerto-rican-coinage

However if a U.S. coin is counterstamped from a different country, does it make sense to cite the other country as the issuer of the coin when it wasn't  even minted there?  If your answer to this question is "Yes", then what about U.S. Trade Dollars that were chopmarked and freely circulated within China?  Would that mean that U.S. Trade Dollars were issued by China? 

Once a coin is countermarked, it is considered issued by the authority that applied the mark.

Example
Brazil:
N#36246
Azores:
N#98862
Hejaz:
N#14209
Cuba:
N#78553
 

I guess this is already an unanimous view in  the numismatic community

If the counterstamp is applied by an autorithy, of course,

Chopmarks were bankers marks, not made by the government

Geison

If the counterstamp is applied by an autorithy, of course,

Thanks for the explanation.  However, Puerto Rico was still a Spanish Colony at this specific point in time.  So I don’t think it had much authority at all.  But I accept whatever decision you  feel makes the most sense.

TonyCoins

Geison

If the counterstamp is applied by an autorithy, of course,

Thanks for the explanation.  However, Puerto Rico was still a Spanish Colony at this specific point in time.  So I don’t think it had much authority at all.  But I accept whatever decision you  feel makes the most sense.

Even if it was counterstamped by Spain but done to be used in Puerto Rico it would still be put under puerto rico. If it was counterstamped in spanish controlled Puerto Rico it still would as well.

Thanks for the reply.   The more I read Geison's reply, the more I understand what he's saying now.  Namely, the big picture here is that there is a framework in place for handling it this way.  In my mind it seems really strange to assign a powerless colony as an issuer.  But if that's the best alignment with the precedent that already exists, then I understand why it's treated that way.

It's strange that in the World Coin 1801–1900 these official countermarks are listed on many types of coins, but not the Morgan dollar. For dollar-size coins:

KM# 18 — Colombia–Nueva Granada 8 reales 1839–1846

KM# 17 — Spain 5 pesetas 1877–1881

KM# 13 — US Bust type dollar 1798–1803

KM# 14 — US Trade dollar 1873–1878

KM# 15 — Lima 8 reales 1772–1789

For such countermarked coins, the Numista catalogue should not describe the host coin in details, but rather link to it with the WC and Numista catalogue numbers. The coin receives a separate catalogue page because of the countermark. The undertype (host coin) can vary widely. 

In addition, the countermarked side is the new obverse of the coin. The authority (re)issuing it is Puerto Rico / the King of Spain with the new mark of authority, i.e. the countermark.

This is true even of private countermarks. Here is a rare case in Numista where the person who did the coin page focused on the countermark without describing the undertype. It should be the same for a token such as this one, where “F D” is the new obverse. This mark was used on a wide variety of half-penny size coins and tokens. It's pointless (and misleading) to describe the host coin.

Thanks, Camerinvs.  That's very helpful.  So does this mean that Chopmarked U.S. Trade Dollars will receive their own Numista page with a different issuer than the United States?  I'm just trying to understand where this is going.

It's very interesting that countermarked Morgan Dollars were left out of WC altogether.

I'm changing the status back to “Open” because it sounds like there's going to be more discussion about this.

Interesting question regarding chopmarks, Tony. It's actually not easy to answer, but let's take a hypothetical example:

1. If the chopmarks are authentic (many fakes out there) and show that a coin circulated in a restricted area, e.g. Hong Kong, and…
2. If the coin is entered into the catalogue for its chopmarks, therefore…
3. It should be entered under Hong Kong.

The same would be true of Spanish-American coins (8, 4, 2, 1, and ½ bitts) with chopmarks in New York's Chinatown. If someone makes a page for these, then they should go under the USA, local coinage or some similar subset.

As for me, my main interest in countermarks is that I'm looking for Canadian countermarks especially on foreign coins because it means that these coins circulated in Canada for some time (except for some few cases where the coins are obviously souvenirs or curiosities). Look for example at this stunning example:

In my collection, this belongs to the Province of Canada (1841–1867) since we know the pharmacists Devins & Bolton were established in Montreal, where they did a lot of advertisement in directories, newspapers, and other printed media, and from about the early 1860s. By my criteria, even this late 1700s Danis skilling:

belongs to this same place and period. By the 1860s it had become a Canadian token of some sort.

Thanks, Camerinvs.  I see what you mean.