2018 LordM Newp #1 (India, Mysore gold fanam)

Whoops! My first newp of 2018!

("Newp"= new purchase, if you were wondering.)

I say "whoops" because this was an impulse buy. Not competely- I mean, it was already in my VCoins watchlist- but it was one of those, "Hey, that just went on sale, and I've got almost exactly that much in PayPal!" kind of moments.

India, Mysore. Tipu Sultan. AV Fanam. Patan Mint, AH1200


Reign Tipu Sultan (1782-1799)
Denomination AV Fanam
Date Struck AH1200 (1786)
Mint India, Independent Kingdom of Mysore, Patan.
Weight 0.30 g
Diameter 6 mm
Reference Mitchiner 984; KM#128.1
Grade XF


Let's cover the main reasons this one appealed to me:

• Hello? It's GOLD. Need I say any more? (Probably not, but of course I will...)
• And it's OLD gold, clocking in at 232 years old this year.
• It has a cool ethnographic design which reminds me of some ancient Celtic and Anglo-Saxon coins.
• I wanted something Indian in my collection that wasn't British colonial. (And I can't afford one of those gold "elephant" pagodas just yet. Perhaps @panzerman or someone else will have one of those for us to ogle.)
• It has a clear date on the coin, which I'm not accustomed to seeing on gold fanams.
• It is from a famous and colorful ruler. I first read of Tipu Sultan and his fierce fight against the British in Bernard Cornwell's historical novel, Sharpe's Tiger.
• Best of all, it was on sale for... less than fifty bucks.

For balance, let's cover the downside:

• It is exceedingly tiny, at 6 millimeters. Hey, how else do you think I'd get a gold coin from the late 1700s for less than fifty bucks? But it is SO tiny that its size actually has some novelty appeal. Gold fanams are often referred to as the "world's smallest gold coin". So the tiny size is both plus and minus.
• I bought it from a seller in Europe and the only shipping option available was somewhat expensive, stretching the net price after fees to $64.56 USD, which still doesn't seem so awful to me.
• To join my Eclectic Box collection on any kind of "permanent" basis, this one will eventually need to go off to PCGS for certification, which will bring my ultimate investment in it up towards the $100 range, for a coin that catalogs for only $50 in XF. But it might grade higher than XF. Who knows.
• Also, as of this writing, I'm not 100% certain PCGS will grade these, though I think I might have seen some slabbed before. And I wonder what kind of insert they'll use inside the slab to encapsulate a teeny-tiny 6-mm coin- if they do. I think I'm willing to give all that a try, though I should do some web research first.

 

Thanks. This one is even smaller than your Russian denga, but your sharing those pictures just helped, because it shows they put stuff like this in inserts more like the older gaskets from before, instead of the the "grippers" or "prongs" in the newer "edge-view" holders. I can't see prongs working on a 6-mm coin!

Oh, hey, cool Ivan the Terrible coin! (speaking of colorful and fierce historical rulers).

 

Hey, Jacob. The melt value here is quite modest, since the coin weighs only 0.3 g. Now, I don't know what purity standard these were struck under, but even if this was a 24K .999 fine gold coin (and it isn't), the value of 0.3 grams of scrap gold is fairly trifling. At today's spot price, even a pure (.999) gold coin of that weight would have only $12.73 worth of gold in it.

So realistically, there's likely less than ten bucks of bullion in this thing at today's price. The rest of the value is historical and numismatic.

I do think an Indian gold fanam could make a very fun "first gold coin" for a young numismatist like yourself. There are other kinds- and earlier than this one- out there, and for even less money, too. I personally chose this particular one because of the Tipu Sultan historical connection and the date.

 

Does anybody know anything about these supposed fanams with elephants on them?

The seller offering these gives no info, and the pictures are as tiny as the coins, but I'm intrigued by the elephants and the toning looks awesome.

There's another type with an elephant facing right, but it looks less like an elephant to me. I like the design of the left-facing ones.

Seller's miniscule pictures of two of the left-facing elephant coins are posted below.

(Sorry, those images are all I've got to go on- and I cropped out acres of empty space around the coins.)

I'd like to know what state they come from, and be sure they aren't some kind of fantasy issue. Anybody know anything?



Calling @Alok Verma in India- do you know much about fanams? By the way, thank you for the package- I just got it late yesterday and have not opened it yet as of this typing. I'll do that in a moment, and send you a PM.

Oh- and on a slightly different topic, but still speaking of elephants, I really want THIS one, but that ain't gonna happen.

 

I posted this thread on January 7, right after I bought the coin in the original post . The coin arrived on February 2. Granted, it had to travel from Belgium to Georgia, USA, but ... wow ... long time comin'!

I sent @Aethelred the picture below.

He referred to my newp as a "fly turd". Hmph.

I corrected him. It is plain to see that it is in fact a gnat turd, and a golden gnat turd at that, so nyah nyah.

(Naturally I wasted no time at all in dropping the dinky little thing when I was sitting in my car outside the post office.)

 

BTW, I threw caution to the wind and bought one of the pinkish toned "elephant" pieces in Post #10. I'm still no closer to knowing anything about them, but I'll post better pix when the coin arrives. (This one is coming from an American eBay seller instead of from Europe, so hopefully won't be nearly a month in coming.)

 

Thank you! I suspected as much (that those were fantasies) but couldn't get anyone to confirm that for me, nor did I have much success in my Google searching. I knew I was taking a chance with the elephant coin. Worst case scenario, I blew forty bucks on a bauble, but at least it should have a tiny bit of gold in it and will be attractive. I'll check on the seller's return policy. Please share pictures of the ones you have, if you can.

I prefer PCGS primarily for the TrueView imaging and the unobtrusive clear inserts. I like NGC fine in terms of grading and reputation in World coins, but dislike their actual plastic slabs.

There's the obtrusive white prongs, the traveling air bubbles inside some I've had, and the fact that several of my NGC slabs are now grotesquely swollen and bulging, apparently from gases trapped within. They look like pillows or puffer fish now and will have to be reholdered. Probably at my expense, since everyone I've spoken to seems to think this is a heat issue. But I keep my coins in a climate-controlled safe-deposit box. And if it were a heat thing, why would only some of my NGC slabs be bulging and trying to explode instead of all of them? All the PCGS slabs are fine. And I noticed the slabs that had the traveling air bubbles inside them before are the ones that are about to explode now. It's really freaky looking.

So the answer is, I regard the "Big Two" TPGs almost equally, but PCGS offers vastly superior photography and better plastic capsules, for the most part.