Hmm. I'm not sure it's ancient - looks almost like an Indian fanam. How about this? One Fanam - Kingdom of Thanjavur-Maratha – Numista
Yup, definitely an Indian fanam. These small gold coins typically date to the 17th-18th century, so not ancient, but still a few hundred years old. Definitely not my area of expertise, so wouldn't be able to classify any details further.
It is an Indian gold fanam: not ancient, but old, as mentioned. I am (as of this July 2023 writing) offering one of these as one of the prize options in my latest giveaway. Click here.
Once upon a time, you used to be able to get these for <$20, but those days seem to be mostly gone. (Gold was cheaper then.) I did luck into three of them in that price range recently, which I bought for my giveaways. Last time I looked in online stores like VCoins and such, fully attributed examples seem to go for $40-50-ish and up. Mind you, I do not know a whole lot about them. The ones I just bought were said to have been struck circa 1700-1830, with gold content ranging between 35-80% purity. So there's not a lot of gold in there, but it is still an old gold coin. The sheer tininess of it adds to the charm. Yours has nice color so it probably has pretty good gold content. I think it's from the later end of the date range (ca. late 1700s to early 1800s), but I don't know enough to attribute them and tell you which Princely State it's from, etc. Perhaps someone here will know.
