This coin took me by surprise as I wasn't expecting anything like this. From my understanding, this coin is struck in between 1820 - 1835. Bhutan coins circulated along Indian coins as presumably it was cheaper to import coins instead of striking fresh coins. While you think it's a coin full of jumbled characters, there is something unusual - that is if you look really hard in this orientation, you can see the characters "ONE". This appearently is overstruck over an Indian 1/4 anna. Of which era / reign it is, I am not too sure yet. I am not well versed in Indian coinage and hope you can lead me in the right direction. I will have to purchase a 1/4 anna coin for comparsion. That said, the existance of this coin got me interested - was it common for Bhutan to overstrike coins? From what I looked at, this does not seem to be the case. Maybe you happen to have one hiding somewhere in your collection?
This is a large image of the underlaying coin. Note that each picture is 1.3mb each. http://gxseries.com/dump/bhutan_half_r_rotated_large_f.jpg And I've highlighted the underlying characters that I could make out. This only appears on Indian 1/4 anna. http://gxseries.com/dump/bhutan_half_r_rotated_large_f_illu.jpg I'm confident that you should be able to see the characters. Weight of this coin is 3.78g. I believe this coin has been cut. I haven't measured the diameter of the coin yet.
