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Laos - Kingdom of Lanchang - Tiger Tonque Money in Silver

 

i find this one odd

 

That one is almost prescient with the hands of humanity reaching out and foreshadowing all the lives lost later on under hitler

 

I agree, its pretty creepy knowing the future history.

 

Tiger tongues were used in Thailand extensively too. My wife's friend told me their name for it, its unique to this coin, but I cannot remember it offhand. I just remember it had nothing to do with Baht, like thier other coins do, and they still remember the coin and name after all of this time.

 

Very nice dolphin. These were cast from the tail end, so the tail is the easiest part to be incomplete. The more expensive ones have eyes like yours, the most expensive names the city, "Olbia" on them as well. They also made different sizes, with the larger ones being most expensive.

I am curious, where did you read the information they were pendants? I had never heard that before.

Chris

 

Not really pendants, but amulets with a special significance. Of course it is largely conjectural since they are found in quantities enough to circulate as a medium of exchange. This example is my oldest daughters, my son also has a very complete one also and these things are not cheap - even at the source.

 

Here is the example from Thailand, these are referred to as boat money and they are bronze:



These things are fascinating, and now not common like they used to be. I really enjoy coins from that part of the world and am glad I bought these when they were much more affordable than now, and also that they were not then being faked.

 

Very true. I got two of these from an old collection with a COA from the 80's, I would never buy one on Ebay. Same with Aztec hoes, I got one from the same source, and another personally I bought at CICF 15 years ago. I find them fascinating.

 

Plate money about 2ftx2ft.
stick that in pocket

 

Oh Jello, you will be jealous - I haven't yet posted my much larger plate monies.:yes:

 

i thought these kinda diffrent???

 

:thumb:It not pocket change hex there so big.its a wonder why they were made.

 

Kind of different, though not old.

 

Did you say 2 feet x 2 feet?

They're actually much smaller. The exact same one you posted was listed on the London Coin Galleries website and dimensions were described as 4 inches x 3 and a half inches.

The Russian versions were huge: http://legacy.stacks.com/Lot/ItemDetail/171338

At over 1,000 grams, it's not for spending but for fighting off someone trying to steal the money you would spend. =)

 

They were made simply because there was an abundance of copper and wanted to create a form of coinage. They new it was impractical, but could serve as reserves in banks. I love the story of a bank robbery in Sweden and they took every scrap of anything of value, but left a huge stack of these sitting in the middle of the vault.

Btw the Russian ones are 10x rarer at least.

 

Probably like 100x rarer. The 2008 Stacks auction listing I posted mentions there's only 3 copper plate roubles known at the time. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of the Swedish versions out there.

Though I have a feeling that only applies to problem free examples. There's probably a lot of them that have been dug up that are corroded and/or damaged.