The Era Of RUBBING!

This morning I was treated to a mail dating back to mid-1973. Attached to that mail, typed on a plain white paper with manual mechanical typewriter, was an image of a Bhutanese copper Maartang dating back to late 1800 - early 1900. I think the Indian collector - since dead - then based in Kalimpong, India was hoping to sell the coin to some Western collectors of Bhutanese coins.

I was truly tickled, in the manner the image of the coin was reproduced - it was replicated on plain white paper by the process of RUBBING. Imagine!! There were no photocopies, scanners or even mobile phones or affordable camera to capture the image ---- people had to resort to vigorous rubbing of the coins to reproduce an acceptable image of the coins they wanted to show to interested collectors located across the seven seas. These days we have all sorts of devices to capture an image - in a flash of a second.

The following is the rubbing of the Bhutanese Copper Maartang that was sent to a collector based in Europe, by AIR MAIL, on 16th May, 1973 - more than half a century back:

Image of the coin produced by rubbing of the coins obverse and reverse - image made in May of 1973

The following is the image of the same exact copper Maartang that is in my collection - captured with Canon’s professional class digital camera model EOS-1Ds Mark III, that can churn out images at a whooping 21.1 megapixel!

Image of the same Copper Maartang, digitally captured, in August 21, 2017

The above coin will be included in my upcoming coin book - it will be one among a group of 15 copper coins labeled Ser Nya Maartang - after the pair of Gold Fish depicted on the coin’s obverse side.