Travancore half rupee ME 1086: very rare?

[Manzikert]

I have just seen a Travancore half rupee dated ME 1086 go for over £560 on Ebay, with 30 bids, and am extremely surprised.

Could someone tell me is this known to be a particularly rare date, or is it just a bit of Ebay madness?

edited seller's pic below

Alan

[Figleaf]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about this coin or its regular price.

Suppose you just bought a lot of 100 coins, all the same. Coin prices are not correlated with inflation, so if you sell say 4 a year, you are sure to lose out to inflation alone. If the coin is neither issued in a rich country nor Roman, you may not even be able to sell them all in your lifetime.

The solution takes an evil partner and eBay. The evil partner bids up the price to idiotic heights, but never forks over the money or takes delivery. You approach the other bidders in private and offer the coin at a much lower price. By the time you run out of prospects you repeat the game, letting the evil partner go higher or lower in view of how many coins you sold in the previous round. Meanwhile, other dealers jack up the price of their stock of this coin. By the time sales approach zero, you sell the remaining stock to another dealer with an evil partner.

Peter

[Manzikert]

I have heard about 'shill bidding' before, but in this case there would have to be at least three shill bidders, one of whom dropped out at about £125, and the other being the underbidder at about £540!

It is very mysterious, as the winner is apparently still interested and hasn't rescinded the bid yet as far as I know.

Alan

[capnbirdseye]

We know that the Birmingham mint produced dies and blanks and actually minted coins for Travancore. The dies produced were to Western standards and the mint record book (which I have ) shows the actual mintage of a large range of Travancore coins. For the 1/2 Rupee the date 1086 is not mentioned but 1087 is showing a low mintage of 100,000.

 I have an example of this coin and compared to the Ebay one I can see straight away it's not struck to Western standards. See my coin below and how the edge is perfect and not damaged by dies that don't fit the planchets properly, note the wide gap between R & M and wonky lettering in the centre. And most of all note how the word Travancore has letters that are uneven and not properly aligned to the edge as they are on my coin and just about every coin struck to Western standards. My coin below was purchased in the 1960's and has remained mostly untouched so it's heavily darkly toned/tarnished, Interestingly there is a slight indent top and bottom where the letter R & V are stamped in the milling of the edge

So what we see on Ebay is probably a fake because Travancore had  placed a huge order at that time (1912) so it's unlikely Travancore mint would start making crude versions at the same time although it might be seeing how bad their own effort was that they turned to Heatons

[Henk]

Interesting discussion and interesting series of coins. I checked Sweeny, The Birmingham mint. See photo. The dates 1/2 Rupees were struck in Birmingham and the quantity (taken from Sweeny) is as follows:
1084 100.000
1086       ? (dies exist)
1087 200.000
1103 100.000
1106 100.000
1107 800.000

For the 1086 Sweeny states: for the quarter Rupee (for which one bronze piece is known) before actual coinage began, the date requirement was changed to ME1087. There are probably some 1/2 Rupee specimens extant (dies still exist) but none have so far surfaced.

I also made a copy of the listing in Krause. This listing shows an illustration of a 1086 1/2 Rupee. Clearly a "western specimen" and struck in Birmingham. Krause also lists the dates 1085 and 1086 (without quantity minted) thus probably 1/2 Rupees of these dates were also struck in Travancore. Krause gives the mintage of the 1087 as 300.000 while Sweeny gives a number of 200.000. Likely the 1086 in the OP was minted in Travancore. If it is rare or not I do not know. The values stated in Krause are identical for all years, which does not necessary has much meaning. I do not have a 1086 in my collection. I do have a 1085 and also a 1087.

[capnbirdseye]

I think for sure that the Ebay coin is most definitely a fake,  my collection contains both Heaton and local Travancore mint issues but non are as badly engraved as that coin, in fact I don't recall seeing any locally struck Indian machine struck coins with the lettering lopsided against the rim as on the word Travancore.

For added interest here is a photo of my coins as they appeared after being untouched for decades  I have improved some of them but most are still tarnished. The small Vellifanams and and some of the fanams are locally struck. I actually bought the whole lot in the 1960's off a 93 year old retired Indian army officer who was stationed in Travancore when most of the coins were in circulation 

[krishna]

I think for sure that the Ebay coin is most definitely a fake,  my collection contains both Heaton and local Travancore mint issues but non are as badly engraved as that coin, in fact I don't recall seeing any locally struck Indian machine struck coins with the lettering lopsided against the rim as on the word Travancore.

For added interest here is a photo of my coins as they appeared after being untouched for decades  I have improved some of them but most are still tarnished. The small Vellifanams and the fanams are locally struck. I actually bought the whole lot in the 1960's off a 93 year old retired Indian army officer who was stationed in Travancore when most of the coins were in circulation 

You have a super awesome collection

[Manzikert]

Yes, it looks as if there might be very rare genuine specimen strikings, but when you look at the letter spacing and alignment on the piece in my original post there are obvious problems compared to the coin shown in Krause.

It looks as it is a contemporary counterfeit for circulation (and which has circulated), and therefore very interesting, but unfortunately not worth £560.

Alan

[capnbirdseye]

Yes, it looks as if there might be very rare genuine specimen strikings, but when you look at the letter spacing and alignment on the piece in my original post there are obvious problems compared to the coin shown in Krause.

It looks as it is a contemporary counterfeit for circulation (and which has circulated), and therefore very interesting, but unfortunately not worth £560.

Alan

I think people were losing the plot by bidding high for that coin, there are modern Travancore fakes around which are then held on a mop to add wear, it's easy to be fooled even for experienced collectors if they made a good job of it.
 I see you added a KM scan to post 4, I had a look at mine but it must be a newer edition (2013) and the values are vastly increased to 25 30- 40-50- 200$ for UNC,  all of which are even more way out now after 12 years so Travancore coins do go for crazy prices. Scarce 1/4 & 1/2 Rupees dated 1889 go for hundreds of pounds when they appear in good condition.

[Henk]

My later silver Travancore specimens. Most were obtained in one lot I bought in the 80's from Seaby.

[Henk]

And the second portion

[capnbirdseye]

Very impressive collection Henk, I see you also have one of the rarest of the all- The Rama Vurma ONE FANAM,  the FANAM ONE coins turn up often but the former is exceedingly rare. I also have FANAMONE with no gap between words so a local minted one.  The 1889 coins always have a damaged rim apparently caused by using dies supplied by Heatons  but on the wrong sized planchets.

 I see you mention Seaby's, In the 1960'70's I used to have them send me a box of Indian coins on approval so I picked what I wanted and returned the rest, I had Zodiac rupees and trial strikes amongst them.
 I still have all the invoices as well so I can look and see some of the coins I sold around 1980 when I got married and see the buyer picked all the good stuff. No internet back then to check values 

[Henk]

In the 80's many interesting Indian coins could be found in the Stock of London/UK dealers at affordable prices.  Almost all Indian coins I have were acquired between 1975 and 1990. I added very few in later years. Wish I had bought more!