Minting Trial Piece By Firm Martin British To H.H.ABDUL RAHMAN AMEER AFGHANISTAN

The trial piece was produced during the reign of Abdur Rahman Khan, known as the "Iron Amir," who ruled the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. Determined to centralize and modernize his country, the Amir hired foreign specialists to establish manufacturing plants for munitions, consumer goods, and coinage,

In 1887, the British engineering firm Martin & Co. (headed by Thomas Acquin Martin) was appointed as an agent to the Afghan government. The firm sent engineer Sir Thomas Salter Pyne to Kabul to serve as the Chief Engineer of Afghanistan. Pyne built factories, trained local craftsmen, and successfully established a modern, steam-powered mechanical mint in Kabul to replace old hand-hammered coin production methods. This trial piece was struck to test the machinery and dies before initiating full-scale local production.

Such trial strikes are incredibly rare today and are highly sought after by collectors of Central Asian and British colonial-era numismatics

These machine-minting trial pieces are extraordinarily rare because they were never intended for public circulation. They served strictly as engineering test strikes to configure the machinery imported by the British. Only a handful of specimens exist in elite numismatic collections worldwide

Obverse (Left):

Features three small bundled flowers at the center, surrounded by the English inscription "H.H. ABDUL RAHMAN AMEER OF AFGHANISTAN".

Reverse (Right):

Left completely blank in the center, wrapped by the names of its creators: "SIR T. SALTER PYNE . MARTIN & CO".

29 mm (Outside Diameter)

11g ( Weight )

Silver ( Material )

Edge: Reeded (milled) edge.

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