Well, I sure don't know. This gold piece is 10 mm across and .1 gm. I have no context to offer. The letters seem a weird mixture of Nagari and English letters, don't they? What do you think Spiralstreet and Ballabh Garg, or anyone else? Richie
the 'reverse' looks like it is just the 'obverse' showing through. Looks one sided to me.. maybe just a local piece? i dunno ... good luck.
A very interesting piece! This certainly looks like a fractional mohur from Nepal. The legends on the coin are in Nagri letters and reads "Shri Ra Na Vi" which indicates that this coin was minted when Nepal naresh was Shri Rana Vikram Singh. The weight suggest that it might be a 1/32 Mohur or even 1/64 Mohur. Regards, Ballabh Garg
Thanks Ballabh! I did some looking, but so far I can't quite catalog the coin yet. And now, a brief song: "You say tomato, I say tomato, Vikram, Bikram, let's call the whole thing off." My scale doesn't do too well when the weight is so light. Is the weight for sure .1 gram, or could it be .09 gram or even .18 gram. Probably not the later, which means that the coin is probably a 1/64 mohar. Richie
Now when I have access to the catalog, I checked this again and looks like this is a fractional mohur of King "Shri Rana Bahadur". The last nagri character on coin is written as "Va" but it can be read as "Ba". There is a slight difference between "Va" and "Ba". King Rana Bahadur ruled from 1777-1799AD. Based on weight, KM#505 is a 1/32 mohur with 0.175 gram. And KM#506 is 1/16 mohur with 0.35 grams. Regards, Ballabh Garg
Ballabh, That's terrific work! I'll need to take the coin to a jeweler to get it weighed properly. I'll let you know what I find out. As for my choice of title: (GM temple token), well, of course I knew it wasn't a General Motors temple token BUT I didn't know the coin was a uniface coin. And the negative space of the Nagari letters on the reverse side do look very much like a "G" and a "M". And I'm not familiar with gold coins. This coin looks so NEW, like it was just minted yesterday. Gold is an amazing material! So yes, it was quite a surprise to find that the coin was minted over two hundred years ago. Richie
