| SPECIFICATIONS | |
| Denomination | Rupees One |
| Alloy | cupro-nickel |
| Diameter | 25.4 mm |
| Weight | 7.13 gms |
| Thickness | 1.9 mm |
| Shape | Round |
| Edge | Security 1 |
| Die-Axis | 0° |
| Special Die | 2,600 |
| Mint | Royal,Wales |
A rare commemorative one rupee cupro-nickel coin that was issued by Central Bank of Ceylon on 4th February 1978 for circulation on the installation of J. R. Jayewardene as the First Executive President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.
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| KM# 144 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
obverse : The Armorial Ensign of Sri Lanka.
Reverse : An proile image of the President His
Excellency J. R. Jayewardene in the center. with the value `ONE RUPEE'
stated in in Sinhala appear at the apex of the coin and in Tamil and
English on ether side with the date 1978.02.04 and `Sri Lanka' in
Sinhala at the bottom below the date.
It will be interesting to note that the minting of this coin was
undertaken at very short notice, in fact a matter of only three weeks
was available for the designing, preparation of tools, minting of the
coins and delivery of at least a small quantity for issue on the
appointed date. To circumvent these difficulties the Royal Mint
adopted a special tool method. This consignment was brought to Sri
Lanka in the early hours of 1st February 1978 by T. M. U. Sallay
(Senior Assistant Superintendent of Currency and author of book "Sri
Lanka Currency of Recent Times 1938-1985") who had been flown earlier
to London in this connection.
More...
The effigy on these 2600 special coins is
slightly different from those on the balance of the order.
The most noticeable difference is the shoulder line of the President's
image. In this rare coin shown above it is comparatively straight, while
in the standard coin shown on right it curves upwards.
According to Sallay, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Colombo in Dec 1999
the choice of denomination was based on the availability at that time of
1 rupee blanks at the royal mint. The obverse was to be the same, and the
artwork for the reverse was done independently by two artists. One of the
original dies was used to produce the small initial consignment and got worn
out in the process, and the other slightly different die replicated to make
the coin dies used to mint the rest of the 2 Million coins.
The special issue of 2600 coins is not a Proof as listed sometime ago in Krause.
It is significantly rare since most of this 2600 released into
circulation got mixed with the 2-million before it was realised
to be different from the rest.
Included in that small consignment were 30 minted as gold frosted Proof coin.
The coin was scanned at 300dpi and the images are displayed at 250dpi. The special rare JRJ coin was a very kind gift to me from Thun Sallay.