11/2 Pice

The Bengal Presidency issues of this period were produced under chronic mint dysfunction — the Calcutta Mint was still dependent on imported equipment and intermittent contracts with private moneyers, leaving the coinage supply perpetually behind demand. This particular denomination served the lowest tier of bazaar transactions, and copper pieces of this weight class circulated until they were unrecognizable. Survivors in any meaningful condition are genuinely scarce precisely because no one preserved what amounted to fractional change.