1 Dollar British Trade Dollar

The British Trade Dollar was introduced specifically to compete with the American, Mexican, and various European trade dollars circulating across East and Southeast Asian ports, where merchants weighed and tested coins rather than accepting them at face value. The Royal Mint struck these at Bombay and later at the King's Norton private mint in Birmingham, not in London — a logistical concession to the trade routes they were designed to serve.

Production halted definitively in 1935 as silver-based trade coinage became untenable across Asian markets. The Straits Settlements had already moved away from reliance on the type by that point.