Picked up this one today - looks Indian sub-continent somewhere but to save me paging through large chunks of Krause does anyone recognise it? Thanks. Measures approx 18mm across and weighs about 6.3g.
Kashmir AE Stater with standing King / sitting Lakshmi. You won't find these in Krause though, as these date from 900-1100AD. There was a long thread on these in the ancients section recently: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/kashmir.303978/ Attribution to a specific ruler may be difficult, as there is not much of the legend on flan on your specimen.
Wow - thanks for that! I had not expected it to be anything like that old. I can't see it fitting into my collection so I will probably sell it on - any idea what value I should put on it?
Looking a bit better, this coin was likely issued under king Gopala Varman. He ruled only for a short period (902-904AD). This would make it a fairly rare type and condition is fairly nice. I am not good with commercial prices but i would put a minimum value of 30 Euros on it. A specialized collector looking to fill a gap might pay double that amount.
Excellent - thank you! I have a lot of other coins to sort through but this one will go on Ebay in due course.
Is it possible that this coin is even older, a Hepthalite coin of Toramana II, circa AD 570-855? The discussion in the Ancients board was about the post-855 AD coins which were copies of the Hepthalite version. See https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=3676 for the Hepthalite pre 855 AD version. See https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=3698 for the post-855 AD version.
It would be exciting if it was! But I fear my coin looks rather cruder than these earlier ones, which to my simple mind implies it is a copy of the earlier ones. I would love to be wrong if anyone can contribute?
It would actually be not so special if this was a Stater issued in the name of Toramana II. These were minted probably for over a century after the death of this ruler and are common as dirt. However this is not a Toramana II type. In the Toramana types there are two Brahmi characters to the right of Lakshmi "JaYa", short for "Yayatu": "the victorius". These are visible on this specimen: In the startpost specimen seem to be two different characters : "GoPa", the beginning of the name Gopala Varman:
