Rama III came to the throne in 1824 under contested circumstances — he was the son of Rama II but not the queen's son, and his succession over the younger, queen-born prince created lasting court tension. The bullet coinage issued under his reign, of which this is a heavy example, continued the pod duang tradition used in Siam for centuries, each piece hand-formed and stamped rather than struck between dies in the Western sense.
The 10 Salu'ng denomination places this among the largest units in the traditional Siamese weight-based system, where value tracked directly against the baht standard. Few survive undamaged; the spherical form made these prone to surface cracking during the hammering process.
Rama III came to the throne in 1824 under contested circumstances — he was the son of Rama II but not the queen's son, and his succession over the younger, queen-born prince created lasting court tension. The bullet coinage issued under his reign, of which this is a heavy example, continued the pod duang tradition used in Siam for centuries, each piece hand-formed and stamped rather than struck between dies in the Western sense.
The 10 Salu'ng denomination places this among the largest units in the traditional Siamese weight-based system, where value tracked directly against the baht standard. Few survive undamaged; the spherical form made these prone to surface cracking during the hammering process.