Dropped by the weekend market in Buriram and to my surprise there was a lady selling Thai coins and currency. These are coins my made for general circulation but sold by the Govt Savings Bank for people to keep.
Yeah, I have never seen coins for sale in Thailand at local markets. Quite a few buddhist amulets, but never coins. Btw, go to a newstand and see how many magazines are for collectors of amulets. You will quickly see that is the "numismatic type" collectible popular over there. The one weird thing about thai's and these kind of collectibles is it cannot be TOO old. My wife said a family would never keep anything over 100 years or so related to Buddhism, but instead would donate it to the temple. They say its bad luck to keep such important pieces personally, and instead should be shared with everyone. She vetoed me when I was going to buy a 500 year old buddhist statue from Siam, saying she refused to have it in the house. Weird.
I asked the wife while we were at her dad's in the village. She said it made no diff to her how old it was but sometimes scratched or damaged ones Thais give to the monks. Her younger brother collects older Buddhas and they have some old ones and amulets in the auction this weekend. Looking online there isn't much I am interested in since his starting prices seem to be more in the retail price range and I don't want to pay over retail for something. Some nice bullet coins.too.
I am so over pod duangs at this point. Hard to store and I literally have 100 or more of them. Sure, I will pick up a group lot now and then if cheap, but that is more the hoarder in me. Actually for Thai coins I really never look at anything except pre-pod duang coinage nowadays. My collection, while not complete, is pretty representative of every major coin type ever struck in Thailand now. I do admit I pursue every Lanna Cheing coin, like my avatar, I see for sale though if I can get it reasonable. I just think they are cool pieces.
