Hi guys, I recently acquired 10 of these silver drachmas of the king Kumaragupta (Gupta empire). I'm usually a Roman and Greek guy but I like to buy something new every now and again. I got these quite cheap at around $30 for 10 of them on ebay (bought from him before and never had any suspicions). They're approximately 1cm in diameter and weigh 2 grams each. What worries me is that one of them appears to have some rust? I know silver tarnishes and does not rust, so this has me a bit worried. It also feels a bit like rust. Besides that, they're very interesting and nice looking coins
I know nothing about the fineness of these coins, but they would have to have some iron in the alloy to rust. Rust is iron oxide, but sometimes the term gets used colloquially to mean tarnishing or toning. It's probably dirt. Soak them in distilled water and they might clean up.
Are they attracted to a magnet? There are many deposits that come on ancient coins that are brown and gritty so rust is not the only possibility. These things are notoriously poorly centered and never have all of the detail that was on the die. They are not expensive but can be interesting and even attractive. Kumaragupta has a reverse of a stylized Garuda bird. There are others that are similar. Below is a Maitrakas of Valabhi issue, I believe, with a trident. I need to put in more study on these before I feel comfortable with them all.
Thanks a lot for all the info doug, they're not magnetic so hopefully it is just gritty. And yes they aren't centered very well at all. In fact out of the 10 I have there are only 2 that have a decent obverse, the other 8 you can't even tell the full design is supposed to be a face. Other than that they really are nice coins. I'll go ahead and soak this one in distilled water and see what happens.
Nice to see some of these ! There among my favorite ancient Indian small change types. The peacock is the dynastic symbol of the Gupta rulers. Coins with this reverse can be found from three succesive rulers: - Chandragupta. He originally copied the type from the Western Satrap drachms. Replacing the arched hill of the satraps with the peacock. These are generally nicely excecuted on a thin flan and rather scarce. - Kumaragupta. Thesea are the most prevalent. These range from fine silver with a thin flan to a later low quality silver dumpy flan. That's the TS's type. - Skandagupta. He was the last important Gupta ruler. During his reign the coins degenerate to very crude almost pure copper pieces. To positively identify the rulers, their name is in the edge inscription in Brahmi. You dont have to learn Brahmi though. Just have to regognize a few characters. The name always starts after the "Sri" (Lord) charcter. Even if the name part of the legend is not visisible, Kumaragupta and Skandagupta can be distinguisehd by their epithet. Kumaragupta's title is Mahendraditya, Skandagupta's title is Kramaditya. Here an early specimen of Skandagupta:
Wow thanks, I'll use this info to double check their ID. Also thinking of getting more of them, they're just so small and intriguing
