Very crude Chinese characters Xiang Fu yuan bao // Horizontally placed Boo Yun in Manchu. 24mm, 3.11 grams. cf. Zeno 229418; Mitchiner -; Millies -.

Most of these crudely cast coins are found extremely damaged (since zinc is easily corroded), this coin is much nicer than most of these.

These coins are made of a zinc (a few of the tested pieces show 98-99% zinc). They were probably cast in Bali and were used in eastern Java, Bali and the nearby Lombok and Sumba islands (and probably other nearby islands as well). Coins cast in zinc (like this piece) and scarcer coins in brass are known. They are sometimes assumed to be tokens of some sorts, but they are found in hoards (sometimes quite large) alongside official Qing cash (see Zeno #229418) and were probably circulated as local currency of sorts. They are difficult to date - the obverse imitated Song dynasty coins from the 11th century, the reverse is taken from Qing dynasty cash, but they are likely to date to late 18th-19th century. Interesting and usual.

Before the Dutch arrival, Bali was not a single unified state, but a collection of Hindu kingdoms ruled by Balinese rajas descended culturally and politically from Majapahit. By the 17th–19th centuries, Bali was fragmented into rival kingdoms such as Gelgel, later Klungkung, Karangasem, Buleleng, Badung, Tabanan, and Mengwi. None of them issued coins - this type of Zinc cash is probably the only attributable type of coins from this period from one of the Bali Kingdoms. The Dutch first established influence in parts of Bali in the mid-1800s but did not fully subjugate the island until a series of brutal military campaigns between 1846 and 1908, including the famous puputan (ritual mass suicides) of Balinese courts.