Tin pitis circulated across the Malay peninsula as the workhorse of petty trade, cast rather than struck, with quality varying enormously between issuing states and even between batches from the same ruler. The alluvial tin that made the Malay states wealthy also made their coinage cheap to produce and easy to counterfeit — a chronic problem that local merchants navigated largely through familiarity with regional types rather than any official verification.
Tin pitis circulated across the Malay peninsula as the workhorse of petty trade, cast rather than struck, with quality varying enormously between issuing states and even between batches from the same ruler. The alluvial tin that made the Malay states wealthy also made their coinage cheap to produce and easy to counterfeit — a chronic problem that local merchants navigated largely through familiarity with regional types rather than any official verification.