Here is a cheap little group I just bought. They are from Palembang, now a part of Malaysia. They are tin pitis, local islamic imitations of chinese cash coins from about 1800. I have a cash collection, a SE asian collection, so I ma not sure which one to put these in. Just an example of interesting little coins that you can find cheap in world coin collecting.
As a follow up, this area was the first part of SE Asia to convert to Islam. These are 3 different types, probably struck over the course of 50+ years. I got all three for a grand sum of $1.04. To be fair, $3.04, (shipping).
Palembang is on the island of sumatera indonesia PLEMBANG was a sultanate from 1659 to 1823 which minted those holed tin 'Pitis'.
To stick up for Medoraman - both Palembang and Plembang are merely attempts to put a local name into our alphabet - neither is more or less correct than the other. But definitely Sumatra Indonesia, not Malaysia. Wikipedia goes for the Palembang spelling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palembang p
Thanks for the correction. I was just going from memory I am afraid, sorry I got the current country wrong. I like these quite a bit, I have quite a number of local cash imitations, from Sogdian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and now Palembeng, (or Plembang). Kind of nice to show with the main Chinese cash collection, showing how the gravity of the Chinese economy affected its neighbors.
