From: Paul
To: Subscribers (free & paid)
Can you identify this old coin or token? It’s got me baffled.
A lady named Barbara submitted these pictures of her unusual old coin to the CoinQuest blog and asked me: (1) what is it? (2) what’s it made of? and (3) what’s it worth? It was given to her over 50 years ago. A friend found it in her grandmother’s attic!
Questions (1) and (3) have me completely bewildered but, for question (2), it is probably a gold coin made out of 12 karat gold (50% pure). Barbara says the piece weighs 56 grams — almost 2 troy ounces — so gold content alone should place the value well over $1000 US dollars.
Perhaps you can help me with ID and value. If you can, please reply to this email, or post a comment on the browser page. Thanks in advance.
Some ideas - The guy on the front with the two spears is completely unknown to me. Who could it be? But the sword on the back looks like a Persian/Russian Cossack sabre from 1879 and thereafter. The coin is probably of Iranian origin, which is consistent with the Arabic inscriptions and the Star and Crescent pattern near the sword’s handle. I can’t read the inscriptions. Maybe you can.
Here is a close-up from Barbara of the sabre side of the coin:
I don’t see anything that looks like a date. Please help me out. Translating the inscriptions to English would help me look it up in my coin database.
The handle of the sabre looks like this one described as a Persian Islamic sword, shashka, patterned after the 1881 Russian Dragoon.