Enigmatic Bombay Issue
INDIA, Colonial. British India. Victoria. Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901. AV Mohur (26mm, 11.68 g, 12h). Continuous legend type. Uncertain, possibly Bombay mint. Dated 1841. VICTORIA QUEEN, young head left; date below; dot on truncation of neck / EAST INDIA COMPANY, lion advancing left; palm tree behind; in exergue, ONE MOHUR above,
yek ashrafi (=
one ashrafi) in Persian. S&W (online) 2.5C - this coin cited and illustrated; Pridmore –; cf. KM 461.1 (for type); Friedberg 1595a. In NGC encapsulation 6472716-001, graded MS 62+. A great rarity of the British Indian mohur series.
Ex F. Pridmore (Glendining, 17 October 1983) lot 10 (includes auction lot envelope with Pridmore collection ticket).
Type 1 gold mohurs dated 1841 with continuous legend on obverse were struck at three mints: Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Calcutta dominated production with a recorded mintage of 601,088. The output of Madras was much smaller at 32,276 while the Bombay mint struck a mere 5,960 such coins. Mohurs from Madras bear a small incuse S on truncation, but a means of distinguishing between the issues of the Calcutta and Bombay mints has proved elusive. When this coin was offered in the sale of the celebrated Fred Pridmore collection in 1983 it was suggested that the distinctive raised dot on truncation ‘was possibly the privy mark for the Bombay mint’ and raised dots are a diagnostic of Bombay mint coins from 1862. The dot-on-truncation variety was subsequently included in Krause Mishler’s Standard Catalogue and priced at more than double the plain truncation mohur but omitted by Paul Stevens and Randy Weir when compiling their monumental Uniform Coinage of India, published in 2012. Presumably neither author had seen a specimen. Our coin was recently shown to Paul Stevens who has published it on his online catalogue www.psindiancoins.com as S&W 2.5C with a rarity of RRR, the highest degree of rarity the author uses. This is the only dot-on-truncation type 1 mohur graded by NGC.
