Coins of the Cambodian tical unit of currency were minted and used from the late 1840s until the mid 1870s. The tical was a small coin containing fifteen grams of silver, and there were several designs over the years. The most common design was an animal, usually a rooster, with few or no other elements.
Tical coins came in a variety of fractional values, as well. The subunits of the tical were:
1 tical = 4 salong
1 tical = 8 fuang
1 tical = 32 pe
1 tical = 64 att
The Cambodian coins of this era can be hard to identify as Cambodian; often one-sided, there are frequently few or no inscriptions, and even within the group of coins available from this time it can be tricky to distinguish them. Also, face values are not always consistent from one seller or collectors to another — one person’s 2 pe coin is another person’s 1/2 fuang coin, for example.
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Copper coins
Some coins from this period of Khmer numismatic history were made only of copper; this includes an att coin and a very similar pe coin from 1847.
Copper billon coins
A large percentage of these coins were made of copper billon; that is, a copper and silver alloy. Such coins include most of the ones minted in 1847 — i.e., the ones that tend to feature roosters and little else as their design.
Silver
Many of the coins were made of pure silver, though weights varied even among supposedly same coins. Many of the 1847 “rooster” coins (and their brethren) exist as silver pieces, as do some later and larger coins with quite stunning and more ornate designs that are much rarer and almost never seen for sale.
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Brass
There were a few tical coins made with brass, including some token coinage from Cambodia’s early French Protectorate days.
Mintage numbers for tical and related Cambodian coins of the mid 1800s are not known, but it is not too difficult to find some of these interesting pieces for sale at a variety of prices. Collectors interested in Cambodian or Indochinese coins can look through the sales listings to see the latest additions and currently-available sales. In 1875, tical coinage gave way to a system of coins that used the Cambodian franc and centimes.
