This is probably the most distinctive of the locally produced cash coin imitations that circulated in Sumatra and Java. Previously unknown to the numismatic community outside of Indonesia, it was found in recent years from the famous Musi River coin findings, where tens of thousands of coins have been pulled out of the bottom of the river in Palembang, Indonesia. Among these findings has been many unpublished and unattributed coins. The top character is Shi, bottom is Dan, right is Li, and right is Bao. Shi Dan Li Bao = Sultan Li Poh Below are three examples. Above, the best Shi Dan Li Bao in my collection. Strong and clear strike on each character, the Bao especially has beautiful marks. Another very nice and unique specimen in my colleciton, the calligraphy is much different on the Shi with the top-down line being more slanted right. The Bao is also much more well formed. Each of the letters is more well formed than the last example. The coin features an interesting bubble or dotted variety that has so far been the only example found on the Shi Dan Li Bao. To me, it looks as though there was something imprinted into the coin mold such as a necklace chain or something fine that made it ornamental. Its appearance is similar to a modern struck through mint error. If anyone knows anything about this or has seen it before please leave a comment! Another educated numismatic friend of mine told me that he thought it was a result of a crude cast and was not intentional. The last one here is an interesting variety where the left and right characters have been swapped around. The coin now reads Shi Dan Bao Li. The right Bao is also heavily corrupted and the rest of the letters appear crude.
TuckHard, Those are interesting coins, thanks for sharing . I don't think a literate Chinese would be fooled by these coins but the local people of Sumatra & Java unfamiliar with Chinese money would. They were obviously made out of necessity to conduct local commerce. Does anyone know why "tens of thousands of coins" were dumped in the Musi River ?
The coins definitely wouldn’t have fooled anyone literate in Chinese but I don’t think that they circulated outside of Indonesia either. Alternatively and unlike a lot of the crude cash coins that were made in the region, the Shi Dan Li Bao coins weren’t imitations of existing Chinese coins, they were actually an original coin and issued by and in the name of the local ruler. At the time in Sumatra the majority of the merchant class were ethnically Chinese and had likely migrated there only a couple generations ago so I would expect that many people were familiar with common Chinese cash and could read them, but there was such a shortage that they must have had no gripes moving into a tin crude issue like this. As for the tens of thousands in the Musi, I’m really not quite sure. Frank Robinson wrote a book and published it for free online called Palembang Coins. He looked over 35,000 coins that they pulled out of the river and cataloged them. I can’t recommend it enough. Curiously, the Palembang Sultanate did issue copper coins one year but none of them were found in the river finds so it is my personal theory that when the Dutch copper coins and others began to flood in the very crude and light tin coins became essentially worthless and were just dumped. I’d love to hear more about this though!
Thank you! If I recall correctly they had some ridiculous exchange rates, like in the thousands of these tin pitis coins for one Spanish 8 real.
