The Puddester Collection

The Uniform Coinage of India, British Imperial Period, Victoria, gold Mohur, 1862, type A/I, Calcutta, younger crowned and robed bust left, victoria queen, single flower in lowest panel of jabot, no privy mark in centre of shoulder ornamentation, rev. one mohur above india and date, all within star and entwined scrollwork, edge grained, 11.68g/12h (Prid. 1 [Sale, lot 67]; SW 4.1; KM. 480; F 1598; cf. Fore III, 2461). Trifling bagmarks, otherwise virtually as struck with full original mint bloom, fresh and attractive £3,000-£3,600

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

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Owner’s envelope.

On 1 January 1859 James Cosmo Melvill (1821-80), the newly-appointed assistant Under-Secretary of State for India, requested Sir Charles Trevelyan, KCB (1807-86) at the Treasury to authorise the Royal Mint in London to prepare matrices and punches for each of the denominations then in use. Leonard Wyon prepared the required tools for the silver and copper coins, selecting a crowned Gothic-style effigy of the Queen and, on the copper coins, discarding the Company’s arms and substituting a mark of value. On arrival in India it was found that Wyon’s matrices failed to meet the technical requirements deemed necessary by the Calcutta and other mints, so new matrices were prepared at Calcutta. No provision in all this, however, had been made for the coinage of gold, which actually was not legal tender at the time, nor was any allowance made for gold in Act XIII, 23 April 1862, when the new silver and copper coins were formally announced. Gold continued to be coined at Calcutta from metal supplied by private individuals and merchants, some of which was coming from the new discoveries in California and Australia, but evidently the pre-1858 mohur designs were used well into the mid-1860s. The imperial design, on coins with the fixed date 1862, is believed to have been first adopted on gold coins in December 1866 (Pridmore, p.102)