Hi, folks, hoping to find some help here. My son and I are working our way through a "bucket" of old foreign coins that I got from my dad. We're doing okay on the coins from Europe and other countries that use the same alphabet. Having some trouble with some of the coins with different alphabets, so I'm hoping some of you with way more experience can help us out. I've scanned the first coin obverse and reverse and attached it to this post. As a general board policy, should I continue to post coins in this same topic, or start a new topic for each coin request? Thanks
Separate threads are best. Otherwise someone who has seen the first coin might ignore the thread after you post another inquiry.
Thanks, I was really looking for pointers on identifying the country to do further research. This is for a scout project where we have to identify 50 coins from at least 10 different countries. So you've pointed me in the right direction, thank you very much for that. Thanks. Will do as you suggest.
I had a bunch of coins with the same man on the front, so I assumed they were all from the same country. We're working our way through a bucket of a bunch of foreign coins (some recent, some from early 1900's) and the ones with recognizable lettering I have been able to find via google's image search. But I am not familiar with oriental script at all. In fact I originally thought this was more arabic. After the help of the board to solve this one, and some diligent searching with my son on the others, we're down to only six unidentified coins. One of them I found by searching for "chinese coin square hole" but I have no way of determining if it's an actual coin or a copy. Odds are good it's a copy, probably a souvenir that my folks brought back from one of their trips overseas, or possibly from my dad when he was in Korea during the war. I'm trying to get good scans of the remaining coins and will post them, hoping someone on the board will be able to recognize them and help point us in the right direction. Thanks again!
Yep... a few years back I was trying to i.d. a different Thai coin...but with the same guy on it. Now I recognize that guy anywhere and know where to start.
Thailand 10 Baht BE2539 (1996) Y# 277 The date might be slightly off, but they were issued stating in 1988 until current.
King Rama IX. He is the longest serving monarch in the world, having been crowned in 1947. His brother was crown prince but was assasinated. Posthumously Rama IX made his brother King Rama VIII, and they struck some 1946 dated coins for collectors bearing his image in the early 50's. Sorry, I just have a Thai collection because of my wife. I have every Rama and coins like Lanna kingdom, Ayutthaya, etc that are pre-Bangkok dynasty.
It turns out we have 3 different Thai coins, with several copies of each. I guess the dates are also in the Thai character set, because I can't see any. We are sure having fun learning though.
Once you can read the dates, I will show you how to convert. How I remember is my mother in law was born in 1957 in our calendar, 2500 in the Thai calendar. So, the math is pretty easy for me. Btw their calendar starts with the Buddha becoming enlightened. Just as good a reason as the reason for ours I suppose. However, they got the date wrong, (don't tell them I said that). It causes problems with dating of certain ancient central asian coins I collect. I believe thier calendar is about 80 years too old to relate to Buddha's life.
Here is a list of thai numbers and here is your coin with the date highlighted. The part underlined in blue is the BE that usually precedes most current dates. Subtract 543 from the BE date to get the current AD date (ie 2013).
Wouldn't that image look better if it was mirrorred? See the attached suggestion. Those 10 baht coins were somewhat popular here in the euro area, in the early years, because some vending machines would accept them as €2 pieces, except that 10 baht is about 25 cent ... Christian
chrisild, somehow I ended up reversing several of the coin images I posted. It's highly possible that I did the same again here. Billyray, thanks for the conversion chart.
