Porcelain money refers to coins and tokens made of porcelain intended for economic exchange. Most famous are the German '' Notgeld'' struck between 1921 and 1923, and the gambling tokens used as petty coinage in

Siam Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 mi ...

with Chinese characters.

German ''Notgeld''

The German porcelain ''Notgeld'' were made between the years 1915 and 1923, in the years before the German Hyperinflation, and a shortage of small change. Most of the porcelain ''Notgeld'' were produced for collectors in sets. These special form of coins were struck in

Meissen Meissen (in German orthography: ''Meißen'', ) is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrecht ...

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

in the years 1921 to 1923. Most of the coins were made in red Böttger stoneware, but also in white porcelain. Some of them are partly gilt. They were issued for the province Saxony in the cities Meissen and Freiberg, the state of

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and larg ...

in the city of Eisenach, in

Silesia Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...

in the city of Münsterberg and in

Saxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it the ...

in the city of Quedlinburg. Building on the popularity of these tokens, Meissen continued to strike Medals in porcelain and stoneware.

Siamese gambling tokens

Also known as "Thai porcelain tokens" or "pee" (Chinese: 暹罗陶瓷代币 ''Xiānluó táocí dàibì'')."Pee" is a form of the Pinyin 币 "''bì''". They should strictly speaking be called "''bi''". Others say that they should be called "''pi''" from the character 鈚， from the Chinese Chaozhu dialect word meaning a token Originally tokens for gambling, these small porcelain tokens became popular as petty coinage. They were made in a variety of forms: round, square, and rectangular. Some have inscriptions in Chinese or Thai, some have a pictorial design. There are several collections of these in museums around the world, including the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, the Museum Volkenkunde (Leiden), th
Sammlung Köhler-Osbahr
(Duisburg).

Malaysian clay gaming tokens

These were issued in Chinese settlements in the Malay states, for use in gaming establishments, and then as currency. The early tokens were imported from Siam, and over time they were also made locally. The tokens were easy and cheap to produce. To deal with large-scale counterfeiting, licensed issuers would change the designs frequently. This eventually led to the appearance of a new type of gambling counter, called ''jokoh''.

Notes

References

{{commons category, Porcelain coins Coins by material Porcelain Emergency money