Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TuckHard, post: 3565434, member: 102653&quot;]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.</p><p>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![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in