2013 - Two Mints - Comparison
SRI LANKA - One Rupee

A definitive decimal currency One Rupee brass plated Steel coin with a alternate milled + plain edge. A small quantity, minted in Mint of Finland Ltd., was first issued by CBSL in 2013 December. Aparently because they did not meet the expected quality, the contract was cancelled and returned to Royal Mint in UK, which had minted nearly all of the Lankan coins from 1959 to 2012. The later coins were issued in 2014 July. They have slight differences as shown below.

SriLanka_r01

Finland Mint - RARE

Royal Mint

20132013
Finland
Mint		Royal
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The Royal Mint 2013 One Rupee coin is more golden color than the Finland Mint coin which is closer to the expected Brass color.

A new master die was created for the Finland coin issue. Many minor differences can be noticed if you overlay and blink the images of the coins in a PhotoEditor. The most significant is the first letter of the Tamil ONE(Onru) compared on image on left which is clearly drawn differently from Royal Mint circulation issues since 1963. It is however drawn more similar to that used on some commemorative one rupee coins since 1957. Pabitra Saha of India, informs me that "The tamil numeral referred to is in-fact an alphabet (letter) and the script used by Finland Mint is the one that is actually used in TamilNadu." Rudi Bokel pointed out at SLNS meeting on 2017 July 16th that all the Tamil characters and the 2 & 3 of date are slightly different.

The number of coins Minted in Finland was not published separable by CBSL. I was unofficially told only a few pallets came and all have been issued into circulation.

Many requests since 2014 to find out how many coins were Minted in Finland went unanswered by CBSL currency Department. The reason I heard was that thet We need not need to tell. When the Right to Information Act came into force on 2017 February 3rd I submitted my request soon after CBSL appointed RTI officer on February 21 which was acknowledged on March 8th and Answered on March 23rd. The mintage was given as 3.6 Million in answer to CBSL RTI 0001/17. With only 2.4% of the 150 million Rs1 coins of 2013 minted in the Finland Mint issue will become a difficult to find collectors coin and particularly rare in Uncirculated condition.

Considering all Brass plated Rs1 coins issued since 2005, a well mixed random sample of 1000 coins could be expected to find 8. Just before the steel coins went into circulation in 2017 April, Ravi Ratnapala informed me that he went through his Till of pocket change from circulation and found only one in 800.

The coin was scaned at 600 dpi and the images are displayed for images to fill the screen.