A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government. Coins often have images, numerals, or text on them. The faces of coins or medals are sometimes called the obverse and the reverse, referring to the front and back sides, respectively. The obverse of a coin is commonly called heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and the reverse is known as tails.
Bangka is an island lying east of Sumatra, Indonesia. It is administered under the province of the Bangka Belitung Islands, being one of its namesakes alongside the smaller island of Belitung across the Gaspar Strait. The 9th largest island in Indonesia, it had a population of 1,146,581 at the 2020 census. It is the location of the provincial capital of Pangkal Pinang, and is administratively divided into four regencies and a city. The island itself and the surrounding sea suffers considerable environmental damage from its thriving tin mining industry which operates on- and offshore.
The duit is an old Dutch copper coin. It was manufactured in the territory of the Dutch Republic and became later an international currency. Its value was 1/8 stuiver.
The pitis was a currency of Brunei last issued in 1868 which circulated into the 20th century. It is also referred to as the picil by Antonio Pigafetta and some variants of it were referred to as the kue and the paku. It was later replaced by the Straits dollar in Brunei, which is valued at 4,000 pitis or 800 paku and at par with the Spanish dollar.
The Netherlands Indies guilder was the unit of account of the Dutch East Indies from 1602 under the United East India Company, following Dutch practice first adopted in the 15th century. A variety of Dutch, Spanish and Asian coins were in official and common usage. After the collapse of the VOC at the end of the 18th century, control of the islands reverted to the Dutch government, which issued silver 'Netherlands Indies' guilder and fractional silver and copper coins until Indonesian independence in 1945.
The mon was the currency of Japan from the Muromachi period in 1336 until the early Meiji period in 1870. It co-circulated with the new sen until 1891. Throughout Japanese history, there were many styles of currency of many shapes, styles, designs, sizes and materials, including gold, silver, bronze, etc. The kanji for mon (文) also shares its name with Chinese wén, Korean mun, Vietnamese văn.
The cash, also called the sapek or sapèque, is a cast round coin with a square hole that was an official currency of Vietnam from the Đinh dynasty in 970 until the Nguyễn dynasty in 1945, and remained in circulation in North Vietnam until 1948. The same type of currency circulated in China, Japan, Korea, and Ryūkyū for centuries. Though the majority of Vietnamese cash coins throughout history were copper coins, lead, iron and zinc coins also circulated alongside them often at fluctuating rates. Coins made from metals of lower intrinsic value were introduced because of various superstitions involving Vietnamese people burying cash coins, as the problem of people burying cash coins became too much for the government. Almost all coins issued by government mints tended to be buried mere months after they had entered circulation. The Vietnamese government began issuing coins made from an alloy of zinc, lead, and tin. As these cash coins tended to be very fragile, they would decompose faster if buried, which caused the Vietnamese people to stop burying their coins.
The British pre-decimal penny was a denomination of sterling coinage worth 1⁄240 of one pound or 1⁄12 of one shilling. Its symbol was d, from the Roman denarius. It was a continuation of the earlier English penny, and in Scotland it had the same monetary value as one pre-1707 Scottish shilling. The penny was originally minted in silver, but from the late 18th century it was minted in copper, and then after 1860 in bronze.
The one mil coin was the smallest denomination of the Hong Kong dollar from 1863 to 1866, after this date it was no longer issued but may have circulated much longer. Its value was one tenth of a cent, or a thousandth of a dollar. It was minted by the Royal Mint, it features the Royal cypher of "VR", of the reigning monarch Queen Victoria at the time, but didn't feature a profile of the face of the monarch as all other coins did, due to the hole in the middle.
The Tenpō Tsūhō was an Edo period coin with a face value of 100 mon, originally cast in the 6th year of the Tenpō era (1835). The obverse of the coin reads "Tenpō" a reference to the era this coin was designed in, and "Tsūhō" which means "circulating treasure" or currency. The Kaō is that of Gotō San'emon, a member of the Kinza mint's Gotō family, descendants of Gotō Shozaburo Mitsutsugu, a metalworker and engraver from Kyoto appointed by shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600 to oversee the Edo mint of his shogunate and oversee its coinage. All mother coins were produced in Edo before they were sent to other mints where they would place the individual mint's mark on the edge of the coin. The coin circulated for 40 years, and stopped being produced during the Meiji Restoration after the introduction of the Japanese yen. Today these coins are now sold as "lucky charms" as well as being collected by numismatists.
Qing dynasty coinage was based on a bimetallic standard of copper and silver coinage. The Manchu-led Qing dynasty was established in 1636 and ruled over China proper from 1644 until it was overthrown by the Xinhai Revolution in 1912. The Qing dynasty saw the transformation of a traditional cash coin based cast coinage monetary system into a modern currency system with machine-struck coins, while the old traditional silver ingots would slowly be replaced by silver coins based on those of the Mexican peso. After the Qing dynasty was abolished its currency was replaced by the Chinese yuan of the Republic of China.
Mahmud Badaruddin I, also known as Jayo Wikramo, was the fourth regent of the Palembang Sultanate in Palembang, South Sumatra. Mahmud Badaruddin I reigned the Palembang Sultanate between 1724 and 1757.
The Kaiyuan Tongbao, sometimes romanised as Kai Yuan Tong Bao or using the archaic Wade-Giles spelling K'ai Yuan T'ung Pao, was a Tang dynasty cash coin that was produced from 621 under the reign of Emperor Gaozu and remained in production for most of the Tang dynasty until 907. The Kaiyuan Tongbao was notably the first cash coin to use the inscription tōng bǎo (通寶) and an era title as opposed to have an inscription based on the weight of the coin as was the case with Ban Liang, Wu Zhu and many other earlier types of Chinese cash coins. The Kaiyuan Tongbao's calligraphy and inscription inspired subsequent Central Asian, Japanese, Korean, Ryūkyūan, and Vietnamese cash coins and became the standard until the last cash coin to use the inscription "通寶" was cast until the early 1940s in French Indochina.
Mother coins, alternatively known as seed coins, matrix coins, or model coins (樣錢), were coins used during the early stages of the casting process to produce Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ryukyuan, and Vietnamese cash coins. As cash coins were produced using sand casting mother coins were first produced to form the basis for all subsequent cash coins to be released into circulation. Under the Han dynasty in China mints started producing cash coins using bronze master moulds to solve inconsistencies in circulating coins, this only worked partially and by the sixth century mother coins were introduced to solve these inconsistencies almost completely. The Japanese adopted the usage of mother coins in the 600s and they were used to manufacture cast Japanese coins until the Meiji period. The mother coin was initially prepared by engraving a pattern with the legend of the cash coin which had to be manufactured. In the manufacturing process mother coins were used to impress the design in moulds which were made from easily worked metals such as tin and these moulds were then placed in a rectangular frame made from pear wood filled with fine wet sand, possibly mixed with clay, and enhanced with either charcoal or coal dust to allow for the molten metal to smoothly flow through, this frame would act as a layer that separates the two parts of the coin moulds. The mother coin was recovered by the people who cast the coins and was placed on top of the second frame and the aforementioned process was repeated until fifteen layers of moulds had formed based on this single mother coin. After cooling down a "coin tree" (錢樹) or long metallic stick with the freshly minted cash coins attached in the shape of "branches" would be extracted from the mould and these coins could be broken off and if necessary had their square holes chiseled clean, after this the coins were placed on a long metal rod to simultaneously remove the rough edges for hundreds of coins and then these cash coins could be strung together and enter circulation.
The one sen coin (一銭) was a Japanese coin worth one-hundredth of a Japanese yen, as 100 sen equalled 1 yen. One sen coins were first struck for circulation during the 6th year of Meiji's reign (1873) using a dragon design. The denomination had been adopted in 1871 but coinage at the time could not be carried out. Aside from an alloy change and a new rice stalk wreath design, one sen coins remained the same weight and size for the remainder of the era. The situation changed when World War I broke out under Emperor Taishō as rising metal costs led to a size and weight reduction. These smaller coins were first produced in 1916 with a paulownia design which was seen as liberal at the time. Emperor Shōwa took the throne in 1926, and Japan was pushed into a militaristic regime by the early 1930s causing metals to be set aside for wartime conditions. These effects would later impact one sen coins through numerous alloy, size, and design changes.
The cash coins of Indonesia was a historical currency in Indonesia based on Chinese imperial coinage during the Tang dynasty era. It was introduced by the Chinese traders, but did not become popular in Indonesia until Singhasari defeated the Mongol empire in 13th century. Chinese cash coins continued to circulate in Indonesian archipelago for centuries; when the Ming dynasty banned trade with the region, many local rulers started creating their own imitations of Chinese cash coins which were often thinner and of inferior quality. Cash coins produced in Indonesia were made from various materials such as copper-alloys, lead, and most commonly tin.
Indonesian numismatic charms, also known as Indonesian magic coins, are a family of coin-like objects based on a similar Chinese family of coin charms, amulets, and talismans but evolved independently from them. Indonesian numismatic charms tend to have been influenced a lot by Hinduism, Islam, and the native culture and often depict religious imagery from Hinduism for this reason. The "magic coins" and temple coins from Indonesia are largely based on the Chinese cash coins introduced to the region during the Tang dynasty era in China, and during the local Majapahit era they began circulating in the region. Unlike with Chinese numismatic charms, the coin charms of Indonesia have not been as well documented both historically and in the modern era. A major modern day work about Indonesian numismatic charms in English is Joe Cribb's Magic coins of Java, Bali, and the Malay Peninsula which is a catalogue based on the collection of coin-shaped charms from the island Java acquired by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles during his lifetime held in the British Museum, the book is further supplemented with data and information available from various other sources.
Daqian are large-denomination cash coins produced in the Qing dynasty starting from 1853 until 1890. Large denomination cash coins were previously used in earlier Chinese dynasties and had faced similar issues as 19th-century Daqian. The term referred to cash coins with a denomination of 4 wén or higher.
"Red cash coins" are the cash coins produced in Xinjiang under Qing rule following the conquest of the Dzungar Khanate by the Qing dynasty in 1757. While in Northern Xinjiang the monetary system of China proper, with standard cash coins, was adopted in Southern Xinjiang where the pūl (ﭘول) coins of Dzungaria circulated earlier, the pūl-system was continued but some of the old Dzungar pūl coins were melted down to make Qianlong Tongbao (乾隆通寶) cash coins. Because pūl coins were usually around 98% copper, they tended to be very red in colour which gave the cash coins based on the pūl coins the nickname "red cash coins".
