The gap between British India’s big bronze half-anna and the small silver 2-anna was an awkward one. Bronze would have made for a 1-anna coin that was perhaps too large, and silver would have made a 1-anna coin that was perhaps too small. It was a problem, however, for which there was a ready solution—nickel.
So copper-nickel it was (the first use of the alloy within the British India series), and working—I expect—with the knowledge of the confusion other countries had experienced when using nickel or nickel alloy coins in a world still heavily populated by silver coinage, the British adopted a dramatically different scalloped shape for their new copper-nickel 1-anna.
The new coin was popular with the Indian public, and although Edward VII passed from the scene with these final 1910-dated 1-anna pieces—the excellent condition of this example could possibly have been due to its having been put back as a small souvenir of the dead King—anyway, British India’s scalloped-edge copper-nickel 1-anna continued under both Georg V and (excepting a brief wartime detour into nickel-brass) George VI.
As late as 1954, well after independence, echoes of this Edwardian piece could still be heard in the new 1-anna pieces tumbling out of the Republic of India’s coin presses.
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