Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 Cowrie Kaudi
| Issuer | |
|---|---|
| Year | 1000 BC - 1825 AD |
| Type | Proto coin |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Natural (shell) |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | ND (1000 BC - 1825 AD) |
| Additional information |
Cypraea moneta shells were harvested primarily in the Maldives and traded across the Indian Ocean in quantities that, by some medieval accounts, reached into the hundreds of millions annually. The Bengali market alone absorbed such volumes that Maldivian rulers structured their entire state economy around controlled export. Cowries circulated as money across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and parts of China for longer than any metal coinage system in history — the Chinese graph for "money" itself derives from a pictograph of the shell.
In Bengal, British colonial administrators formally demonetized cowries in 1825, the date that closes this specimen's attribution window.