DescriptionThe British Royal Mint struck this coin during the period when it was making unfrosted proofs.The island of Brunei was one of the local sultanates off the Malay coast for several hundred years before making a deal with the British that preserved a degree of local control and kept it out of the Straits Settlements. It became independent along with most other British colonial territories in the mid-20th century. Then they discovered oil. Now it is an absolute monarchy, the entire nation the private property of the Sultan.The big player in East Asia is China, of course. Then there is Japan and Korea, throw in Mongolia. South of China and east of India, but not including, for the most part, the islands to the east, is what we call Southeast Asia. From Burma to Malaya there have been a series of local kingdoms for about 2000 years. Russia, with its Asian Siberia, doesn’t count. We consider it part of Europe.By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.
