These copper tokens were issued under Rama III not by the royal mint but by Lotus, a Chinese merchant trading company operating in Bangkok — one of several commercial enterprises licensed to produce small-denomination currency when the palace could not meet demand for low-value coinage. The Siamese monetary system of the period relied heavily on bullet coins (pot duang) in silver, which left a persistent gap in everyday retail transactions that private tokens like this one were struck to fill.
The arrangement was common across Southeast Asia wherever Chinese merchant networks operated, and Siam was no exception.
These copper tokens were issued under Rama III not by the royal mint but by Lotus, a Chinese merchant trading company operating in Bangkok — one of several commercial enterprises licensed to produce small-denomination currency when the palace could not meet demand for low-value coinage. The Siamese monetary system of the period relied heavily on bullet coins (pot duang) in silver, which left a persistent gap in everyday retail transactions that private tokens like this one were struck to fill.
The arrangement was common across Southeast Asia wherever Chinese merchant networks operated, and Siam was no exception.