Token India Temple Ram Tanka with Hanuman

This is a Hindu temple token or ramtanka used for religious purposes. They are becoming more and more collectible as people from around the world discover them. Most of them have been produced recently, withing the past 100 years, but ancient tokens are said to exist.

Some of the most knowledgeable coin people we know hang out at the World of Coins Forum, and they have a number of excellent numismatists who specialize in coins of the Indian subcontinent at this link.

Values for these pieces depends mostly on authenticity. With no sure way to determine authenticity, evaluating them is basically impossible. Looking around the web, and checking dealer prices, tokens made of non-precious metal which appear to be authentic carry catalog values as follows:

worn: $5 US dollars approximate catalog value
average circulated: $10
well preserved: $30
fully unicrulcated: $70

These prices apply to all tokens, which come in a variety of designs, including those with and without inscriptions. See this page for more information.

Hanuman is a Hindu god related (as I understand it) to monkeys. He appears on both sides of this token, on the front in full figure and on the back near the bottom of the scene of Lord Rama's coronation. We have a ramtanka of Lord Rama at this CoinQuest link.

The token in our main picture (with both sides of the token, at the upper right) comes from Coin House SESAM Basel in Riehen, Switzerland. It is silver-washed copper and is in good condition. A typical retail price for this piece is $50 to $70 US dollars. If an honest dealer were buying a piece like this from you, he or she would probably offer about one-half of retail, perhaps less. CoinQuest thanks Coin House SESAM Basel for use of their coin photo.

We have see the same token in base copper and in what appears to be gold. Base copper pieces sell around $10 US dollars retail. We are not sure of the value of gold ramtankas, but it is substantially more than copper or silver-washed copper.
cqLastNotify