Travancorean coins.

Spiral,
thanks for the information, every little bit of info helps.

 

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Biju,here's an article that will be right up your street,as it were; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travancore_rupee .

Aidan.

 

there is an interesting thing... the Princely state of Travancore never issued a Rupee coin.. infact, they had the authority to issue coins upto the denomination of 1/2 Rupee only..
64 cash = 1 chuckram
4 chuckrams = 1 fanam
7 fanams = 1 Rupee
that means 28 chuckrams were equal to 1 Rupee ( ofcourse, you'd only get two half Rupee coins only). Interestingly, 1 Rupee of British India which was in circulation with the Travancore coins was equal to 28 and ahalf chuckrams which gave it a slight advantage over the Travancore Rupee.. It was an obvious plot to make the British coins more popular among the public.

 

Biju,you will actually find that both the British Indian coins & the native coins were in circulation in the Indian Princely States,even in such states as Hyderabad & Bikanir,just to name 2 of them.I wouldn't be too surprised if the Maharajahs of Travancore allowed the British Indian Rupee to be legal tender along with the Travancorean coins as well.

Aidan.

 

of course, the British coins were legal tender in Travancore..

 

... And anywhere else where silver coins were accepted.

In those days (and even today) the business community care less about a specific coin being legal tender or not. All they care was the silver content in the coin.

Regards,
Ballabh Garg

 

There are always two sides of a coin....

The fact is that Travancore half rupee were minted slightly underweight. The weight of a Travancore half rupee is 5.44 grams while the British half rupee is 5.83 grams. Also a British rupee is 11.66 grams (around 0.8 grams heavier then two Travancore half rupee). This will explain why a british rupee will get 28 and half chuckrams in exchange.

Now, Travancore half rupees were purposely struck underweight. The coin was legal tender in Travancore state and Maharaja wanted them to circulate in his state only. This was achieved by making them slightly underweight.

Regards,
Ballabh Garg

 

wow!! you've solved a problem for me Ballabh... thanx a lot.. :hug:

 

hi guys.. i've just posted my entire Travancore collection on the net... please do take a look... look at the number of non-catalogued coins in the collection... there are quite a few.. http://s201.photobucket.com/albums/aa79/travancorecoins/

 

very nice collection