1 Paisa - Sher Shah Suri

Sher Shah Suri's copper paisa sits within one of the most consequential monetary reforms in pre-Mughal South Asia. Having ousted Humayun in 1540, Sher Shah overhauled a fragmented coinage system, standardizing weights and metals across a fractured subcontinent — a reform so effective that Akbar later built the Mughal system directly on its foundations. The Sur reign lasted only fifteen years total, with Sher Shah himself dying in a gunpowder accident at Kalinjar in 1545.

Five years of production compressed into a single reign makes clean attribution by regnal year nearly impossible for most copper issues.