| SPECIFICATIONS | |
| Denomination | 96 Stiver |
| Alloy | Silver.833Ag |
| Type | Struck |
| Diameter | 23.0 mm |
| Thickness | 4.1 mm |
| Weight Legal | 18.14 gms |
| Weight | 17.57 gms |
| Shape | Round |
| Edge | Plain |
| DieAxis | O° |
| Mint | Ceylon |
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pridmore #3; Mitchiner #2201; Krause #78 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Obverse : Within a circle of dashes an elephant facing
left with the year 1809 below a ground line.
Reverse : Within a circle of dashes CEYLONGOVERNMENT
preceded by a group of seven dots. The value in Stivers at center
96 ST within a bead circle. No
lines below the T.
R. Nott reports 2 varieties for 1809 (P#2-3), i.e. Seven dots with two, and no lines below T.
The small dot in the center of reverse between the 9 and 6 like the 1808 96 Stiver coin from the Wriggins collection.
The coin shown on this page is from Jan Lingen who explains the dot
``When cutting the dies often a centre point is used for
marking the circular legend and outer borders. Once the punches for the
values are added the centre point usually disappears while on some other
varieties the centre point is very clear (like on the 1808) and sometimes
just visible against the side of the 6 (on my 1809 coin).
In my opinion all the coins were initially designed with the use of a
centre point, but by filling in the design this point disappeared.
Moreover I have also a 24st 1808 that shows this centre point.''
I thank Jan Lingen who kindly sent me a 300dpi scan of this VF coin from his collection in reply to a question I asked on southAsia-coins Egroup.