Good Day everone. as I mentioned in my last post I recently bought a collection of silver coins which also included some ancients and Thai Bullet Money. One of the items is a large lump of metal with strange markings on it. It is not silver and it’s magnetic. I would not normally bother about something like this but it does have some strange markings and indentations. I wondered if any one else has come across anything like this before? I look forward to your input.
Wow...ball bearings from a crashed Alien space ship... Do they glow in the dark? .....I'll wait go check....
Malaysian tin or lead items. I believe about 200 years old. I own a number I bought from sellers of other tin money of that era. Some people call these "magic money" believing the markings have some magical connotation, I have no idea if that is true. What we call bullet money is actually a derivative of medieval Lanna coinage that evolved over time. It was so long even most Thais have no knowledge of the evolution.
This coin is unfortunately a modern fantasy. These etched metal balls are typically called Borneo bullet coins. They were made in the second half of the 1900's by a family operation in Java. These fooled early collectors and authors; Mitchiner included them as a Borneo steel currency in his earlier works. Later they were exposed as a modern fantasy. Joe Cribbs writes about these and the group that made them in his book Magic Coins which I unfortunately do not have. They are somewhat collectable in their own right, but are not nearly as old as led to believe.
Thank you. I knew they were Malaysian sourced, but couldn't remember the other details too much. Just so people are aware, there are some 300-400 year old Thai tin or lead coins in existence that to western collectors might look a little similar to these. However, they are different shaped, (like a fat U), and usually have countermarks like elephants on them. They are pretty rare though, I only own maybe 4 because I got lucky about 12 years ago.
Here is a fake 'pod duang' I bought a few years ago. Appears to be made of brass. I showed it to a Thai coin dealer who seems to be rather knowledgeable and he said it was probably made at some temple as a good luck piece, perhaps for Muay Thai (Thai kick boxing). I kept it as an interesting item, and I do have several genuine silver pod duang.
I suggest anyone interested in pod duong coins to study how they were made. They were oval pieces where indentations were made on one side, (inside), then folded on indents. Most fakes do not bother to actually fold the coin, but cast it in the same general shape. Knowing this identifies most fakes immediately. This is covered well in "From Funan to the Fifth Reign", a book I highly recommend to any budding Thai collectors.
