Kinda cool mid-century India just arrived from Heritage
A gold "tola" biscuit or wafer bullion piece from Calcutta circa 1950. The tola is a traditional Indian and Southeast Asian measure of weight, and weighs 11.3398038 grams or exactly 3/8 troy ounce.
Many firms made these tolas in this period of time in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Singapore. It's clear they took pride in their designs--they are interesting and attractive. The obverse of this piece was what caught my eye. But the reverses all have a neat mid-century aesthetic that I really like, too.
This firm was caught red-handed receiving smuggled gold, melting it, and turning it into these "laundered" tolas.
Sham Lal Sen Private gold Tola ND (c. 1950) MS64 NGC, KMX-Unl., Fr-1612. AGW 0.3730 oz. A highly lustrous and sharply struck private tola issue, featuring an attractive obverse design that illustrates a leftward running deer with rising sun over mountains in the background. Seldom seen as a type. AGW 0.3730 oz.
--Severian the Lame
Comments
They are one of those little overlooked areas of collecting, usually when I have seen those they are sold for slightly less than melt and nobody wants to deal with them because outside of India nobody knows anything about them. I collect USSR gold medals, similarly until recently they were overlooked in the west because nobody really knew much about them - they were sold only to westerners and the westerners didn't buy many of them because the prices were high. In the secondary market they usually sold for less than spot as just scrap gold. Now Russians want them so they are all being bought up and taken back to Russia.
Interesting perspective, @SaorAlba. I researched past auctions and saw pretty stable prices well above spot. That said, I was able to pick this one up for not only less than the Heritage estimate, but actually less than melt (not including the premium).
An NGC MS63 sold for nearly twice what I paid for this one just one year ago.
But the best part is that I don't trigger my box of 20 rules with this piece: it's just bullion
--Severian the Lame
I kinda like the obv. Thanks. Peace Roy
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That's really cool, Weiss! Nice pick up!
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