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| Cristal inspects a silver 'flower money' coin of the type once used in northern Thailand and Burma. The monies are just two
of 2,000-plus pecuniary treasures he keeps catalogued and arranged. Tibor Krausz |
This coin collector is no penny pincher
From 'pig mouths' money to 'tiger tongues,' numismatist Ronald Cristal sheds new light on history.
from the August 29, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
If you showed up at your local grocery store with a human head or two in exchange for necessities, you'd hardly be welcome. Not so among ancient headhunters on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, for whom the trophies were valuable mediums of exchange.
Such monetary relics, Cristal concedes, would be extreme even by the flamboyant standards of his own collection. Yet for the most part, if ancient Thais, Laotians, or Burmese ever used it, Cristal wants it, too – and will pay handsomely for a specimen.
"Have a look at these!" he invites, pulling golf-ball-sized curios from one of his two top-of-the-line, drill- and fire-proof safes, in which lie the 2,000-plus prized items of his coin collection, minutely catalogued and arrayed meticulously in plastic trays.
"They're pig-mouth money," he says – so named because, turned upside down, the hollow balls resemble a porker's gaping mouth (minus the teeth). These items of "a premodern metallic monetary system" worked alongside cowrie shells as more or less standardized tender. They date back 700 years to the Lan Na Kingdom in what is now northern Thailand.
"They may look crude," Cristal says, "but no counterfeiter can exactly duplicate them." And he, of course, should know: He also collects modern and contemporary counterfeits. "See these [distinct] flow lines on the silver?"
Even within the rarefied world of numismatics, Cristal's specialty – Southeast Asian "curious money" (with Thailand a special trove of treasures) – counts as wildly exotic fare. True, the Aztecs paid in cocoa beans, and gaudy parrot feathers once fetched quite a bit among certain tribes in Africa and Oceania. But genitalia-shaped currency? Or how about "bracelet money" (copper, silver, or gold), obviating the need for banks by making wrists into portable safety depositories?
Then there's "flower money" (coaster-shape silver tokens imprinted with the petal-like patterns of coriander blossoms) and "leaf money" (copper currency decorated with the motif of radiating veins on leafs). Both were once widely in use in the northern regions of today's Thailand and Burma (Myanmar).
Yet this numismatist's paradise, the American Numismatic Society notes, has been "almost entirely ignored by scholars and collectors."
Cristal agrees. "Most coin people," he laments, "only look at flat round coins with regular shapes and stamps [imprints]."
To remedy that situation, he's just finishing a definitive reference book on Thailand's premodern coinage, a Yellow Pages-size magnum opus with color plates listing over 900 unique specimens (most from his own collection). Although the book is still in draft form, Kusik Manodham, chairman of the Numismatic Association of Thailand, is already heaping praise on "this momentous work."
The book follows such earlier tomes by Cristal as "The Centenary of Thai Banknotes" and "The Coins and Medals of the Rattanakosin Era" (Thailand's current monarchic dynasty which started in 1782).
Grandma Leah would be proud. It was, after all, Cristal's grandmother's jar of "nickels, dimes, and Indian-head pennies" that sparked the interest of her Brooklyn-born grandson. A Polish immigrant to the New World, she also taught him the value of every last penny.
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