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What is my coin worth?

What is my coin worth

We get a lot of requests from people asking us for the value of their coins. It is hard to respond to all of them. However in most of the cases you can get a fair idea of what your coin is worth in market. In this article we share some tips on how you can find out the value or worth of your coin.

The first step is to identify the coin. In most cases, if you understand the language on the coin it should be easy. If you can’t identify your coin out rightly, you could always use Google’s reverse image search for this. Read more about identifying your coins.

Once you have identified your coin, use the following tips to find out what your coin is worth.

  • Do a basic internet search for your coin. You can add “price” or “value” to your search term. For example you could search for “One rupee 1887 coin price“. This will show you many results including many places where the coin is on sale.
  • Ignore prices from all sites that require you to contact seller for actual price. These sites will most likely list very high prices in lakhs of rupees.
  • Check sites that specialize in coin sales. Do not rely on generic ecommerce sites (like Snapdeal, Amazon, Flipkart etc.) or sites that don’t directly sell (like IndiaMart etc.).
  • Typically ignore highest and lowest listed prices. These are outliers.
  • Identify the average price range listed for your coin.
  • Assume you can get about 50 to 70% of that price range by selling to a dealer. This can be much lower too if you are selling a large lot of coins.

To realize better price for your coin, you should try to sell directly to collectors. For this you could register as a seller on BidCurios and list your coin for sale directly to collectors to realize best price. Learn about how to sell on BidCurios.

Remember, there are many factors that influence the value of a coin. While you may have a coin that looks the same as one that may have been sold for a very high price, it probably is not the same. Keep learning about collecting coins and develop an interest in coin collection and then you may be able to identify really rare coins that sell for lakhs and crores of rupees.

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King Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar – 1 Kasu

King Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar issued 1 Kasu hand-struck coins each year of his reign (1673-1704) indicating the completion of one year of his rule. The Kannada numeral 1 was struck on the coin in the year 1674. In 1675 he issued a coin with the numeral 2 (in Kannada) indicating that he completed the second year of his rule in the Indian state of Mysore and so on.

In total he struck 31 coins (1704 AD being his last year of reign). Each coin had an unique Kannada numerals on it, starting from 1 & ending with 31.

Two coins 32 & 33 was issued after the king’s death by his queen consort (regent) in the year 1705 & 1706.

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Mauryan Dynasty Coins

From the time when coins was first used in India in about 600 BC, until the time of the Mauryan Empire (321 – 187 BC) the basic form of coin was a silver piece punched by one or more stamps bearing deigns of a largely pictorial character.

The Mauryan Empire coins were punch marked with the royal standard to ascertain their authenticity. The Arthashastra, written by Kautilya, mentions minting of coins but also indicates that the violation of the Imperial Maurya standards by private enterprises may have been an offence. Kautilya also seemed to advocate a theory of bimetallism for coinage, which involved the use of two metals, copper and silver, under one government. The Mauryan rule also saw a steady emergence of inscribed copper coins in India as evidenced by Tripuri coins in Ashokan brahmi script and various pre Satavahana coins dated 3rd-2nd century BC in Deccan.

The Mauryan coinage consisted almost exclusively of silver karshapanas of roughly 3.4 gm, a series that continued the Magadha karshapana series. Almost all Mauryan coins have five punches, as did the Magadhan coins before them, namey a sun, a “6-arm symbol” and three others. Some of the last coins in the series also had a punch on the reverse of the coin.

Some symbols found on Mauryan Dynasty coins

Over time, the flans became smaller and thicker. Mauryan Empire also introduced for the first time in India square shaped copper coins with punch marks. The economy must have been very prosperous, as the coins seem to have been minted in the millions.