East India Company, Bombay Presidency, Early coinages: English design, copper Copperoon, type A/I, yr 7 [1672], arms of the Company, hon : soc : ang : ind : ori · [The Honourable English Company of the East Indies] around, scrolls around shield, rev. a : deo : pax : & : incr[ementvm :] [Peace and increase cometh from God] around mon : bombay anglic regims Ao.7o. [Money of the English Government of Bombay year 7] in five lines in centre, 14.03g/10h (Prid. 78 [Sale, lot 460]; Stevens 1.33; KM. 131). About extremely fine and extremely rare, especially in this condition, almost certainly the finest A/I Copperoon in private hands [certified and graded NGC MS 61 BN] £2,000-£2,600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Puddester Collection.

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Collection

J.G. Murdoch Collection, Sotheby Auction (London), 21-30 July 1903, lot 51
J.B. Caldecott Collection, Sotheby Auction (London) 11-13 June 1912, lot 44
V.M. Brand Collection, Spink Auction 50 (London), 6-7 March 1986, lot 220
Bt Spink Australia (Sydney) 1986.

Owner’s ticket and envelope.

The designs for the coinage of copperoons, or pice, introduced in late 1672, imitated those of the contemporary silver anglinas. Most of the coins bearing the year 7 were probably struck in 1673, although by 1675 the standard of manufacture and weight of the coins was causing concern. Despite the annual arrivals of Company ships, some bringing Swedish bar copper to augment the local supply from Surat, there were frequent shortages of pice to pay workers and the army, who refused the tin equivalents. The situation was not helped by the fact that the chief coiner had, in the summer of 1676, ‘run away, having stolen another man’s wife’, and the other mint workers were ‘inefficient and most tedious’ (Pridmore, p.102). It took more than a year for a replacement chief coiner, Govindji Madharji, to move from Surat and take up his post at Bombay. Slight changes to the design of the copperoons were made in the 1690s, when subsequent coinages took place