1838 Mysore 20-cash
Verfasst: So 07.12.14 21:14
This 1838 20-cash from the former Kingdom of Mysore—then a large state in South India—is a crude copper coin struck at the Mysore mint just a half-decade before the end of the Kingdom’s coinage in 1843. (One of the very many consolidations that finally gave India its current unified coinage.)
A similar but somewhat more finely executed 20-cash type was coined concurrently with this 1833-38 type at the Bangalore branch mint—which seems odd, because if there’s a difference in quality between a mother mint and a branch mint, usually it’s the branch mint’s coinage that’s inferior. There might, however, be an easy explanation: Great Britain had moved the administrative center of the Kingdom to Bangalore in 1831, so the move may well have made Bangalore—not Mysore—the Kingdom’s de facto mother mint.
One additional note…I see that as of 1 November 2014, the city of “Mysore” has been officially renamed “Mysuru.”
v.
A similar but somewhat more finely executed 20-cash type was coined concurrently with this 1833-38 type at the Bangalore branch mint—which seems odd, because if there’s a difference in quality between a mother mint and a branch mint, usually it’s the branch mint’s coinage that’s inferior. There might, however, be an easy explanation: Great Britain had moved the administrative center of the Kingdom to Bangalore in 1831, so the move may well have made Bangalore—not Mysore—the Kingdom’s de facto mother mint.
One additional note…I see that as of 1 November 2014, the city of “Mysore” has been officially renamed “Mysuru.”
v.