4 Keping Thin flan

The 1804 Penang kepings were struck at Matthew Boulton's Soho Mint in Birmingham under contract with the East India Company, part of the same broader reform effort that produced the famous Soho-struck coinage for Britain and its colonial possessions. The "thin flan" designation is not incidental — it distinguishes this issue from the heavier, thicker strikings of the same type, a variation that arose from production inconsistencies at Soho rather than any deliberate policy change.

Penang, ceded to the Company by the Sultan of Kedah in 1786, required its own token coinage because Spanish dollars and local tin currency created chronic small-change shortages in the port settlement.