The Puddester Collection

The Uniform Coinage of India, East India Company, Victoria, original Proof Mohur, 1854 [John Pinches, London], in silver, bust left, no initials on truncation, victoria queen, date below, rev. lion walking left, palm-tree behind, east india company above, one mohur, yek ashrafi in exergue, edge plain, 8.40g/6h (Prid. 26 [Sale, lot 16, this coin]; SW 3.15; KM. Pn20). Brilliant and virtually as struck, of the highest rarity as an original Proof; no others with plain edge seen by the cataloguer in commerce £7,000-£9,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Puddester Collection.

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F. Pridmore Collection, Part III, Glendining Auction (London), 17 October 1983, lot 16, ticket.

Owner’s envelope and record card.

A further order of dies, matrices and puncheons by the Company for a gold coinage in four denominations, originally placed before the death of William Wyon in October 1851, was completed by his son, Leonard Charles Wyon (1826-91). The work, entrusted not to the Royal Mint but to the London firm of John Pinches, took most of the latter half of 1853, and mindful of that Wyon instructed that the obverse dies be dated 1854 (Attwood, pp.324-5). Despite the work costing the Company over £380, the dies were never used in India contemporaneously and almost all 1854-dated coins encountered are proof restrikes