The Puddester Collection

The Uniform Coinage of India, British Imperial Period, Victoria, original silver Proof Pattern Rupee, 1863, Royal Mint [by L.C. Wyon], crowned and robed bust left, victoria queen, 4.75 panels in jabot, no signature on truncation, embroidery in high relief, round pearls in crown with double line curves, rev. one rupee above india and date, all within scroll-like wreath of Indian flora, top flower with points up, plain cone below, bud cone above one, no cone by last e of rupee, edge plain, 11.44g/12h (Prid. 106 [Sale, lot 116]; SW 4.105; KM. Pn60). Trifling hairlines and a small toning spot above nd of india, otherwise brilliant mint state, a stunning coin, exceptionally rare; the only coin of British India dated 1863
£9,000-£12,000

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

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Taisei/Baldwin/Gillio Auction 29 (Hong Kong), 2 September 1999, lot 471, label.

Owner’s envelope, “this is [the] only one I’ve seen”.

As the matrices sent by the Royal Mint in 1861 proved unsatisfactory for normal use, even after modification by local engravers Kasinath Dass and Johannes Lutz, the Secretary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood (1800-85), persuaded Thomas Graham, Master of the Mint, to have L.C. Wyon alter the obverse die of the rupee and prepare a double set of tools for each of the Indian mints. A tiny number of 1863-dated rupees, depicting the effigy of Victoria in slightly lower relief and other minor detail differences, were struck in London prior to the tools being despatched to India. Neither Calcutta nor Madras used the revised matrix; Bombay, run by Lt-Col John Archibald Ballard (1829-80) did, but it proved troublesome and a further request was made for a replacement from London in 1864. More tools were supplied in the wake of a few patterns being struck in London (Prid. 107; not in this collection), but the situation was little-remedied until the visit of Lt-Col Henry Hyde (1824-87), Master of the Calcutta mint, to the Royal Mint in May 1867. Hyde, who considered Wyon a medallist rather than a coin engraver, was critical of the latter’s high-relief work and suggested that re-modelling would result in increased output per die and save expenditure. Nevertheless, Graham persisted with Wyon, who produced a small number of 1867-dated coins in London (Prid. 108-9; cf. Fore II, 809) before the tools were sent to Calcutta in March 1868 (Prid. 110; cf. Fore II, 810)