question regarding small gold coins

dorkkarl · October 9, 2002 9:28PM

what is the smallest gold coin minted in modern times? i have a mexican gold coin that's about the size of the head of a pin. anyone happen to know?

K S

Conder101 · October 9, 2002 11:21PM

Must be an awful big pin. The smallest mexican gold coin, the two peso, is about the size of a type 3 US one dollar gold piece 14 mm across.

lordmarcovan · October 9, 2002 11:37PM

Surely you mean the top of a pen, not the head of a pin. It would be impossible to make or to use anything as small as a pinhead for currency.

The smallest gold coins I have seen were not exactly minted in modern times- that would be the gold fanams from the Indian Princely States, made from around the 1600's to the mid-1800's. I guess these average around 8 mm. They are tiny and crude, but interesting. And affordable- usually around 15 bucks or so. Kinda hard to beat... a 200+ year old gold coin for under $20...who cares if it is tiny?

Here's one of a few auctions for them on eBay at the moment. I picked this particular auction to link to because it had a nice price and a picture of some fanams beside a Mercury dime, for scale.

LINK- this is actually a pretty good deal on one of these.

dorkkarl · October 9, 2002 11:46PM

ooops, another blatant mis-use of the english language on my part! my "pin-head" (get it?

) comment was meant as an exagerration of the coin's smallness. yes, it is in fact about the size of a us g$.

those fanam's are cool! does any dealer sell those outright? they look like hammer-struck coins, but i would be more interested in die-struck gold coins. any european or asian die-struck gold coins of particularly minute size out there?

K S

lordmarcovan · October 9, 2002 11:58PM

The fanams are hammered. There are other tiny gold coins out there, and some of them die struck in the 18th century (I think some of the German States had some teeny suckers). But the fanams are the smallest I have seen in person. A dealer selling them outright will generally ask $15-19 each, which is another reason I think that auction's a good deal. Even if you don't know which coin in the picture you'll get, they all look like better-than-average examples. Those stylized designs with the pellets are often supposed to represent varous animals and/or deities, I believe. These designs are present on both sides of the coin, and the coins are rather thick. Sort of like a little gold saccharine tablet or one of those tiny Certs breath mints they have nowadays. The primitive designs on those remind me a bit of the Celtic gold staters struck in Southern England in the first centuries BC and AD.

I have heard a story (of unknown veracity) that says these fanams were "largesse money"- meaning that when the local prince or rajah came into a village, he would scatter these to the crowd. If this is true, it would make for some interesting times with a metal detector. It would take nothing to lose one of these in the dirt. I lost one in the living room of a friend's house once and he didn't find it until months later... in the kitchen floor sweepings! We had turned the living room upside-down looking for it, too. How it ended up in the kitchen is a mystery.

We have a new member from India who can perhaps shed some light on the topic?

wallstreetman · October 10, 2002 12:08AM

How do you get your name?

CarlWohlforth · October 10, 2002 12:10AM

I know you asked about modern times and assume you know about California fractional gold. But I wanted another chance to post an image of my 1/4 dollar gold piece

It is in the bank so I can't measure it right now but it is very small, way smaller than a Mercury dime.

lordmarcovan · October 10, 2002 12:14AM

<< <i>How do you get your name? >>

Who? Me?

I put an explanatory note about that on my eBay page.

question regarding small gold coins

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