Naser al-Din Shah's reign saw repeated attempts to rationalize Iran's chaotic coinage system, and this 1864 copper pattern sits within that broader effort — though "pattern" here likely means it never cleared the political and logistical hurdles required for actual production. The Toman itself was a unit of account more than a reliable denomination, with silver krans doing the real transactional work. A copper 2 Toman piece would have represented an unusual pairing of base metal with a high-value denomination, which may explain precisely why it remained a pattern.
Naser al-Din Shah's reign saw repeated attempts to rationalize Iran's chaotic coinage system, and this 1864 copper pattern sits within that broader effort — though "pattern" here likely means it never cleared the political and logistical hurdles required for actual production. The Toman itself was a unit of account more than a reliable denomination, with silver krans doing the real transactional work. A copper 2 Toman piece would have represented an unusual pairing of base metal with a high-value denomination, which may explain precisely why it remained a pattern.