1 Pie Pattern

1 Pie (Pattern) - obverse1 Pie (Pattern) - reverse

© Museum Victoria

Features

Issuer Bengal Presidency (British India)
Type Pattern
Year 1809
Value 1 Pie (1⁄192)
Currency Rupee (1765-1835)
Composition Copper
Weight 7.28 g
Shape Round
Technique Milled
Demonetized Yes
Number
N#
76406
References KM# Pn24a
Tracy L. Schmidt (editor); 2019. Standard Catalog of World Coins / 2001-Date (14th edition). Krause Publications, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, United States.
And 5 more volumes.

Obverse

The arms of the Company, date below, value above
The motto on the ribbon reads: AUSP:REGIS & SENAT:ANGLIAE
Surrounded by a raised, toothed rim.

Script: Latin

Lettering:
ONE PIE
AUSP:REGIS & SENAT:ANGLIAE
1809

Translation: By the authority of the King and Parliament of England

Reverse

Legend in persian: Yek Pai Sikka
Surrounded by the value in Bengali and Hindi (Ek pai sikka)

Scripts: Arabic, Bengali, Devanagari

Lettering:
एक पाइ सिक्का
এক পাই সিক্কা

Translation: One pice coin

Edge

Plain

Mint

Soho Mint, Handsworth, England (1788-1850)

Comments

- The Soho Mint of Matthew Boulton and James Watt planned to supply significant numbers of copper coin to the East India Company at the beginning of the nineteenth century. However in 1809 a large shipment for the Madras Presidency was lost when the Admiral Gardner, which was transporting the most needed denomination, the 10-cash coins, sank. Then it was discovered that Soho had struck almost 2.4 million twenty-cash coins that had not been ordered but still expected the East India Company to take and pay for them. This pattern coin prepared by Soho for the Bengal Presidency was a victim of which developed out of the Madras problems. Doty wrote "To close this unhappy period, a projected coinage for Bengal (which might have been even larger than that just completed for Madras) dissolved into thin air, a victim of rising copper prices, ill-feeling, the illness of one designer (John Phillip) and consequent overwork of the other (Conrad Heinrich Kuchler), and the pedantry of Dr. Wilkins, the perfectionist to whom the creation of the three native languages spelling out the denomination had been entrusted. The mistake over the twenty-cash coinage was the final blow, from which the Bengal coinage never recovered." Dotty, Richard The Soho Mint, London, 1998, p.332.
- Pridmore# 389

See also

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Date VG F VF XF AU UNC
1809  Soho mint

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