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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;medoraman, post: 2348106, member: 26302&quot;]The marks on the side have nothing to do with bullion. There are chakra marks at the beginning and end, with Lanna writing in the middle. My wife grew up in northern Thailand so was taught how to read the Lanna alphabet. The Chakras and Lanna mints are all known and documented. Chieng Sen and Chiang Mai are the two mints you will find 99.9% of the time on authentic examples. I only have one from a mint other than those two, but have maybe 5 each from Chiang Mai and Chiang Sen. There are about 80 total mints, but all but these two are horribly rare.</p><p><br /></p><p>Several interesting things about these. One, did you notice if you turn them a certain direction they resemble a pair of elephant tusks? I have never read any other numismatist notating that, but to me its unmistakable. Second, if you look a the history of THai coinage you see how this shapes evolves over 600 years to be the pod duang shape of later Thailand. Others call pod duang &quot;bullet money&quot; or &quot;cowrie shell&quot; money, but its simply not true. THere is a direct, historically documented lineage from this coin to a pod duang in shape. The interesting thing about CHieng Sen is that the Thai people themselves destroyed it. Chieng Sen was the second largest city in northern THailand, but in the late 1700&#039;s too close to the Burmese armies. So the Thai&#039;s, to prevent the Burmese from possibly taking the city over and inheriting a wonderful staging area for further invasions, destroyed the town themselves and depopulated it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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