The Asian Games—not to be confused with the SEAP or SEA Games—had first been held in New Delhi, India in 1951, but no commemorative coin attended them until the ’66 (5th) Games in Bangkok. It was a very similar piece to this one, which would—like the 1970 Games themselves—have been something of a last-minute affair. (Prospective host South Korea had backed out because of financial difficulties, and Japan, which had been asked to substitute, declined because of the demands of Osaka’s Expo ’70.)
The flawed surfaces of this particular 1970 1-baht I think are of special interest: despite the coin’s poor appearance, it came in a 34-coin mint set that Bangkok’s Royal Mint was extremely proud of…”covered…with a piece of fine Thai silk in brilliant red or blue…[with] the grand image of the mythological Paradise Bird…in metallic gold.”
The manufacture date of the set can be had by noting that its (two) 1970 1-baht coins are the newest coins in the set, and its only members to remain in their natural state—all the others having been “selected from those in mint condition and brilliantly polished afterwards.”
Yikes.
v.