A rare grain token from a famine in India in 1876 is one of the highlights of Stephen Album Rare Coins’ auction No. 51, scheduled for Jan. 23 to 26, 2025.

The uniface 1876 bronze half-seer Relief token from British India, without a hole, was struck for use during two years of famine affecting southern India in the 1870s.

The Great Famine of 1876 to 1878 struck India under British Crown rule. It began in 1876 following an intense drought that resulted in crop failure in the Deccan Plateau.

The famine affected south and southwestern India — the British-administered presidencies of Madras and Bombay, and the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad — for a period of two years.

Relief tokens with and without a hole for the half-seer denomination are known, and all are apparently very rare.

A seer (also sihr) a traditional unit of mass and volume used in large parts of Asia prior to the middle of the 20th century, was officially defined by the Standards of Weights and Measures Act (No. 89 of 1956, amended in 1960 and 1964) as being exactly equal to 1.25 kilograms (2.8 pounds), but there were variances in accepted weights and depending on location.

Classifying a rarity

The type is classified as KM-Tn3 in the Standard Catalog of World Coins by Chester Krause and Clifford Mishler, and as Pridmore-34 in The Coins of the British Commonwealth of Nations to the end of the reign of George VI, 1952. Part 4: India. Volume 2: East India Company 1835-58, Imperial period 1858-1947, by Fred Pridmore.

According to the auction house, “This is the only known specimen we are aware of,” and Coin World’s research suggests that perhaps as few as two examples of the token with the hole exist.

The sale of this token underscores a market reality: tokens almost universally sell for far less than comparable coin rarities, regardless of nation of origin.

Graded Mint State 63 brown by Professional Coin Grading Service, the token has a pre-sale estimate of $2,500 to $3,500 U.S., surely a fraction of the likely price for a comparably rare coin of British India from the same period.

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