India, Kamaragupta (414-455 AD), Silver Drachm. GVF

This small bronze coin was the smallest coin in Jewish currency, issued ca 103-76BC. It is best known because of what Jesus Christ said about it. When a widow gave one as a gift for charity, a merchant made fun of her. Jesus said (Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1), ‘This poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast in the treasury’. In other words, the Mite or Prutah meant more to that woman than the gold given by the rich man. We have a nice selection of these small, well circulated, and important bronze coins. Great as a gift as most people have heard of the fabled Widow’s Mite. Don’t expect them to be anything but a small crudely struck bronze coin, but do expect to have something that is rather important in history as well as in life.

These Billon Silver coins were minted between A.D.1022 and A.D.1135, making them between 900 and1000 years old! They were created in India by those who fled the Islamic expansion and were based on Sassanian coins showing the side facing bust of the monarch on the obverse and a fire altar on the reverse. As time went by, they started to get less and less realistic as the reason for the designs were lost. This means that the coins we have from around 300 years later are very abstract! The stories of Sinbad the Sailor are based on the sea voyages that Arabic peoples made down across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and these are the coins that the sailors would have found on their journeys. We offer you these Silver Billon coins called Gadhaiya Paisa that were the major trade coins of medieval India. The obverse shows a stylised head facing to the right with the reverse showing a fire altar made from abstract dots and lines.

This set was made up by the Swedish Mint in 1984; it contains all six coins issued for circulation. But the coins are in Prooflike Uncirculated and far better than the normal coins would look like. The set comes in a blue and gold hard plastic case, showing both sides of the coins. The set contains the 5, 10, 25 & 50 Ore as well as the 1 & 5 Kronor coins all in Prooflike Uncirculated condition. The set is now 35 years old and I would guess not all that easy to find. The set is sealed by the Swedish Royal Mint.