I bought this on the off chance that it was British, but as far as I can see it is not. Any ideas? It is very small and is white metal, presumably silver. US cent for scale of course!
Looks like a Lepton Widows Mite to me. Very common ancient middle eastern coin. I sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. Is it truly silver? It could be a copy in silver made for jewelry as well. It's small size screams widows mite or prutah to me though.
I'm not into these enough to render a solid opinion but I'm leaning towards a India hammered coin, just cannot place it. They are hard to identify w/o a Krause book.
Indian states, Travancore, 1 Chuckram. Should be km1 under Travancore state. Dates 1600-1847, appearantly unchanged over those years
confirmed in my 18th century Krause catalog 3rd edition, India-Princely States Travancore, Chuckram KM#1 , silver, ND(1600-1860) grade/value VG-$0.60 F-$1.00 VF-$1.50 XF-$2.00 I think I have 1 of these some where.
Some years ago I bought some bags of these in silver and gold. Alledgedly, and this was backed up by reports in Indian newspapers at the time, a building site in a major city was the location of a substantial hoard of the tiny coins, many of which left the site in the labourer's pockets and lunchbags before officialdom stepped in with muddy boots to claim the rest of the coins. Quite a large number were sold at a Midlands auction house, and most of those I bought were sold on ebay soon after.
Yes I got the same answers out of Krause. I rather hope, with the Indian interest in their old coins, it is worth a little more now!
found mine here they are... these are very tiny 2 1/2 - 5 mm size. my main fascination with them was the size and that they were silver.
