The Puddester Collection (Part I)

East India Company, Bengal Presidency, Benares Mint: Second phase, copper Pattern Double-Pice in the name of ‘Shah ‘Alam II (1173-1221h/1759-1806), 1221h, yr 48 [March-June 1806], unsigned, fulus shah alam [money of Shah ‘Alam], fish and trident symbols, no differentiating marks, rev. zarb benares 48 [struck at Benares in year 48], edge plain, 30mm, 15.57g/6h (Prid. 299 [not in Sale]; Stevens 7.175; KM. Pn21). Good very fine, exceptionally rare, almost certainly the finest known specimen in private hands; only one other (Stevens website image 1751, ex Oswal 78, 408) traced on the market in the last 20 years [certified and graded NGC AU 53 BN] £3,000-£4,000

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

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Collection

Format (Birmingham, UK) FPL 22, January 1983 (1888)
K. Wiggins Collection, Baldwin Auction 25 (London), 8 May 2001, lot 649, ticket.

Owner’s ticket and envelope.

Following the internal investigation into the affairs of the Benares mint, control of the facility passed to Dr Thomas Yeld in 1805. Yeld, appointed assistant surgeon at Benares in 1791 and promoted to head surgeon on the station some years later, combined the posts of mint and assay master. He appears first to have turned his attention to the dire state of the copper coinage and accordingly suggested a new issue of double-pice, pice and fractions, struck on Calcutta-prepared blanks, while submitting patterns for the four denominations, prepared locally using sheet copper, to the Governor-General in Council in the Spring of 1806 (two of the denominations, the pice and half-pice, appear unknown today). After due consideration the Calcutta mint committee recommended that a reduced-weight copper coinage be adopted, but struck at Calcutta, much to the chagrin of Yeld who maintained that the population in Benares were not minded to accept Calcutta-made coins. Hence, the Calcutta-manufactured pice of 1807-9 were not accepted in Benares and it was not until 1815, and the introduction of machinery, that Benares once again produced a copper coinage