Thai coins and currency - help ID please

@medoraman that is a good suggestion for a strategy to split things up, fair to everyone. I've tried to restrict my posted images to coins and currency, to stay on topic. But there is a tremendous amount of other stuff, and yes the Buddha-related items are much more collected in Thailand than coins. People do love the commemorative coins and banknotes and they snap them up, but like the US they make bazillions of them. My father-in-law was a banker and a collector. He traded with a lot of other collectors of these religious items, and received some of them as collateral on personal loans that the bank wouldn't handle. He probably knew what all of these are and how much they are worth, but unfortunately he died suddenly from a heart attack over 20 years ago and I don't think any of it was ever documented. I recall that mother-in-law sold just one of these statues for $2500. Itemizing all of this with values is going to be a big project. I know there are some other coins in these display cases but it will have to wait until my next trip over.

Just a sample:

 

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Wow! He liked Buddha for sure. The bigger ones are probably worth a fortune. It is interesting to see how many different kinds there are. Thanks for sharing these pics. Are the black ones brass with a very dark patina ?

 

Both in-laws were devout Buddhists, him more so I guess. He used to meditate in that room, surrounded by the bazillion Buddhas. I don't know how to identify the various styles but I know some are from the early kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya. There are some ceramics from early eras as well. You can also see a few statues of Guanyin, a goddess. The dark ones are some kind of metal alloy but I don't know what. A lot of them were probably cast. I imagine specialists might even trace them to specific temples. Some are also carved out of various stone, such as jade or alabaster perhaps, and some are teak etc. The ones in the tourist shops are all resin made to look like wood. A lot of the small amulets were kiln-fired brick-like material. Father-in-law gave me one a long time ago, possibly Ayutthaya? I find all of it interesting and would like to know more.

 

Always sad to loose a family member. Sorry for the loss.

I wouldn't wish to be the executory of that estate.

My experience with estates has been to get it all appraised by a professional that the family agrees on, and then sell all of it and divide the results among the survivors, but allow the survivors to pick one or two items to remember the person by. Less bad feelings or someone saying they were cheated.

 

OP, the RS127 baht, please take it to some thai coin shops and have it authenticated if you are ever in thailand. That coin is commonly faked and even the fakes are very convincing. Their are many thai dealers/collectors on facebook that you can contact.

 

@Mountain Man I think they will divide it up first and then each decides whether to sell or keep. Kind of a shame to split up such an awesome collection. It's also a lot to store. Grandkids will get stuff. My hunch is most of the Buddhas will get sold. I would probably buy the coins/currency from the estate if no one else has an interest.

@Mkman123 Yes we will make sure it's real. He was an astute collector but I'm not sure that he knew much about coins other than what's silver or gold.

Anybody know a place where I can research the banknotes?

Speaking of gold, it may interest some to see what a gold bar in Thailand looks like. They're typically 96.5% and weighed in baht, which is both a currency and a weight. 1 baht = 15.244 grams.

 

Thats a big bar!!

 

Yes, I think that is a fair, equitable approach.

 

That gold bar is huge. If I did the math right 15.244 X 20= 304.88 grams divided by 31.1 (1 ounce) = 9.803... ounces. Wow. Not sure I did that right ??? Wait for other opinions. BIG money for that bar. $1,932.10 X 9.8 = $18,934.58 I am not sure how much the purity of the gold 96.5 will effect the price of that bar ??? Wait for more opinions on the price value of your bar.

 

1 baht = 15.244 grams x 0.965 = 14.71046 grams = 0.4729 troy ounce, times 20 baht = 9.458 troy ounces, times $1933.35 = $18285.62. I'm not a gold guy so not sure if it's priced in troy ounces. Anyway, yeah, it's a lot, but it sure as heck isn't mine. Tough to split three ways...

Back to coins, this is why they used to put holes in them - coin rolls without the roll. These are all 1 satang. My wife's grandmother was a rice trader and as a kid she remembers strings of these around grandma's shop.


I was given a couple of them years ago, here's one (1935) so you see what they look like.

 

I found a pic of more sizes for Thailand gold bars...

 

Actually, they might have put holes in them later to facilitate strings, (that is what you call them), but the Chinese actually started with holes in cash 2200 years ago to facilitate manufacture. They would cast the coins and put them on square dowel rods to hold them in place to clean the casting sprees and detritus from them en masse. 2200 years of this in this area of the world simply meant this is how these coins are "always used". These were very late to Thai coinage though, Thailand had a very interesting and unique coinage system mainly based upon Indian coinage systems, not Chinese ones. This Chinese idea of a small value coin with a hole on a string did not come to Thailand until about the start of the 20th century.

 

Here is the Thailand (formerly Siam pre 1939) 1 Santang (Y#57) from year 2485 (AD 1942). Small tin coin with 790,000 pieces were also struck for circulation from 1967-73 ( all information from the Krause Manual). Similar design, larger brass with a hole with an unknown mintage from 1941 were struck as the first 1 Satang coin from the Kingdom of Thailand (ibid). I would imagine (never actually being to Thailand) that vast quantities of the earlier Siam 1 Satang coins continued to circulate years after WW2.