A historical mistake!

 While working through the lot of coins, I found a coin that had a deer facing backwards. After a bunch of online research and the help of Gemini, I discovered that the deer looking back was a common motif with the "Thirai cash" issued by Venad/Chera dynasty. These were issued in 1600 and it is the Venad lineage that grew to become Travancore. 

You can see the deer turning back mentioned in this research paper. You can also see examples of this coin here (Image 1). In the standard examples, one side has a deer turning back. The other side has a battle axe. 

                                                        

Here is the shocking part! My coin is a double obverse. Both sides of my coin have the deer. This is generally very rare and considered pretty valuable.  These are hammered coins. That means there was a human who keep a heated coin between the two dies and imprint it by beating it with a large sledgehammer.  An actual human being sometime in the 1600s made a mistake and used two dies that both represent a deer for this coin. Maybe he was coming back from a vacation and just easing into things. And this was his first coin. Maybe this was an apprentice who messed up.  In any case, it super cool that 400 years later we are experiencing the mistake this person made.

                                        

 



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