Here's a section that will be right up Spiraltreet's street.It is about the coins of the various Indian Princely States,which were independent to a certain degree,but under British suzerainty.What states' coins do you have in your collection,& what are your favourite ones? I personally like the 1940 1/2 Pice & 1/4 Annas from Bahawalpur,the silver 1 Rupees from Hyderabad,plus the big copper coins from Kutch that were issued in the 1940's.Indian Princely States' coins are very popular with collectors of British Commonwealth collectors,but it is impossible to complete a collection,as there are always new discoveries being made. Aidan.
Aidan , you are right. Personally, I like the Travancore coins, may be because i belong there. Its very difficult to complete a collection (I dont think there is any one who has a complete Travancore collection). It is believed that there were about 170 different coins from Travancore. I know a collector who has 142 different coins. And he has the best collection as far as I know.
There were about 632 princely states in India. All of them had no coins of their own though. So it would be a good idea to collect atleast one coin from each state.
Spiraltreet,I have a few Travancorean coins.I have a silver 1 Fanam that has the M.E. (Malabar Era) date in English numerals,a copper 1 Chuckram that has the Maharajah's portrait,plus an 1889 silver 1/2 Rupee from Travancore.I like the shell symbol on the obverses of the coins.Have you ever had any of the Travancorean gold coins? Aidan.
mm... gold coins? I've got a couple of smaller gold coins from Travancore.. But the machine struck bigger gold coins are too much costly for me.. the lowest one would cost around 1000$ or more.. the gold coins became very rare because of the habit of women here. They used to melt the coin for ornaments and after about a century later, there are only a few left..
i used to collect India coins. Started with British Eats India Company then coins of the regency period, thenFrench / Danish / and Portuguese India coins, then on to earlier like Sultans of Delhi, Aurangazeb etc, then on to the various states. I've got coins from 23 different states, som,e a lot more than others likeHyderabad, Indore Jaipur and Travancore. Some only the one coin, like Chamba, Datia, Junaghad, Kota, Pudukottai. It was fascinating collecting Indian coinage and although I still have all my Indian coins, my collecting interests moved on.
Roy,the British East India Company's coins of the various presidencies are of interest.There were 3 main presidencies,which were ruled directly by British Governors appointed by the Honourable East India Company - Bengal,Bombay,& Madras.It is the Madras 1808 & 1809 10 & 20 Cash coins that turn up,as they were recovered from the wreck of the Admiral Gardner. Aidan.
Here is a 10 cash coin from the wreck.I picked it up a couple of years ago. For anyone interested in reading about it,here is a link to the story.Click on the "cargo" link to see pics of the same coins. http://www.eicships.info/ships/s815/wreck.htm
