Coin Curiosity

Researching the history coins of the British Commonwealth

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While India had a uniform coinage from 1862, a number of Princely States continued to strike their own coinages, even into the 20th century. The Princely States had been issuing coins in varying denominations and sizes which made handling them in official contexts difficult. In 1870 the Indian government began to curb their issue by forcing the closure of any local mints that were inoperative for a period of more than five years. In 1876 the government passed Act IX - it said that Indian States coinage would be legal tender only if the coins were identical in dimensions and fineness to the uniform coinage; were struck at British Indian mints; were denominated in English and were different to existing designs used in their state of issue (p47, Thompson, The Coins of British India Part IV: Subordinate and Independent States in Coin News, April 2023). By doing this it further reduced number of local issues and made handling the new issues much easier.