Keeling Cocos Island 1913 Tokens

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I had never seen those before. Really nice group. I checked ebay. Sellers are very proud of them but rarely ever sell them.

I think they would sell best with an auction house. Make sure they are reputable and specialize in coins.

Nice Set

Great set, Richard, especially in this sort of aggregate condition, and always sought after by collectors of both the Pacific Rim and the "British World," particularly those in (or specializing in) Oceania. Totaled up, and subject to my caveat below, these are easily worth several hundreds of USD or GBP. While consigning them to Noble or Downie's in Australia would make a lot of sense, my hunch is that they would attract the most attention in a worldwide auction venue, such as (for example) The Hong Kong sales by Stacks or Spinks. Stephen Album also has a huge following among collectors of this sort of material.

Visit coinarchives.com and Google (!) for links to other sales. Here's a nice group sold in a recent Stack's sale: https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/l...gc-certified

I agree that your Rupee #1 would probably command a premium, but couldn't venture a guess as to its size as most of us who have owned these consider ourselves lucky to acquire any random unmatched examples we can find ...like the set that took me 20+ years to complete for my collection (sold long ago).

My one caution is that you should consider having them authenticated, only because -- with the exception of the rupee -- their color is not what one normally expects to see in originals in this series. The ivoroid, or ivorine, plastic that was used in 1913 usually still looks sort of "ivory" in color a century later, so the uniform and pristine grey of your minors is a bit jarring to my eye. Maybe they're patterns, or could they be restrikes? Hoping you hear from some of our many forum members who are much more knowledgeable than I am...Sap, I'm looking at you!

For the record, these are the mintages as reported by Jerry Remick et al. in the 3rd edition of their 1971 compendium of Commonwealth coins and tokens: 5 Cents - 5,000, 10 Cents - 5,000, 25 Cents - 5,000, 50 Cents - 2,000, 1 Rupee - 2,000, 2 Rupees - 1,000 and 5 Rupees - 1,000. The original research was probably done by Andrews or Pridmore, but my books of theirs are all packed away in the attic...sorry I can't be of more help "in the moment."

Congratulations on an excellent exonumismatic find!

For many years now I have been compiling a database of these ivorine tokens, which now stands at just shy of 1,000 items, more than 60% of which are imaged.

None of the OP's examples are on my list, possibly indicating that they have been held as is for a very long time.

It seems strange to me that there are 4 examples in almost pristine condition and one not so. The serial number 1 on the R1 also doesn't seem to be where it should be, and based on my images of other examples it is in the position of a "1xx" (I have an image of the "2").

Many years ago, a Melbourne dealer acquired a bulk lot of tokens from the Islands and marketed them in short sets of four, comprising the C25, R1, R2 and R5 denominations. This lot are obviously not from that source.

I highly recommend that these be graded and slabbled by NGC or PCGS.
Please let us know the results.

As a general observation, the use of mobile phone cameras is a disaster, as evidenced by the above, unless great care is taken to ensure the vertical and horizontal dimensions are spot on.

The reference by daltonista above to "Pridmore" caught my eye as I recalled the name. Capt. Fred Pridmore was with the British Museum.
There was an article published in December 1965 by Ray Byrne, F.R.N.S. Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, wherein he credited Pridmore with one token (809 R5) held in the Museum's collection.
Ray's listing at that stage was a total of 80 tokens known by number.
What I found strange about Ray's sources was that even though the Cocos (Keeling) Islands had been an Australian Territory for 10 years by then, there were no Australian sources listed.