This copper piece is a pattern striking — produced for official review, not circulation — dating to the period when Siam was actively modernizing its coinage under Rama V, who ascended the throne in 1868 at age fifteen. The shift toward Western-style machine-struck coinage was driven partly by pressure from British trading partners who found traditional bullet coinage impractical for commerce. Patterns in multiple compositions were struck and evaluated before final production decisions were made, making survivors rare and institutionally significant.
This copper piece is a pattern striking — produced for official review, not circulation — dating to the period when Siam was actively modernizing its coinage under Rama V, who ascended the throne in 1868 at age fifteen. The shift toward Western-style machine-struck coinage was driven partly by pressure from British trading partners who found traditional bullet coinage impractical for commerce. Patterns in multiple compositions were struck and evaluated before final production decisions were made, making survivors rare and institutionally significant.