The Collection of Mallaca Coinage Book

The finding of Mallaca tin money picture recently make me wonder if they is any book regarding tin coin in Melaka. I search using internet and found one book by Tony Lye Fong Nge-The Collection of Mallaca Coinage Book (13th to 18th century). I have been doing business with uncle Tony for over 5 years but I don't remember about his book. I go to Amcorp Mall Flea Market yesterday and hope Uncle Tony is there for me to buy this book from him personally.

Yesterday is my lucky day, I found Uncle Tony in Amcorp Mall Flea Market. If you're frequent Amcorp Mall visitor, Uncle Tony table is just below the stair to the Lower Ground of the Mall. He sold that book to me with a discount of 30% and he is willing to signed that book and took picture with me. The book price at 100 ringgit Malaysia with 326 pages.

Tony Lye Fong Nge was born in Mallaca in 1939. He quit his job as Chinese interpreter in 1978 and started to become a coin dealer in the same year. He is one of the founder of Malaysia Numismatic Society in 1968 and the only one left in the society. He has been awarded a "Man of achievement" by international Biographic Centre, Cambridge, England in 1980. He also one of the 1st seven member that been awarded "Pakar Numismatic Malaysia" by Malaysia Numismatic Society in 1989. He also one of the contributor for Krause Publication catalog. With so many achievement at hand, he is a respectful person in Malaysia Numismatic.

The Collection of Mallaca Coinage Book published in 2005 with limited 1000 copies. Uncle Tony started writing this book after years of disappointment searching for information regarding Mallaca coinage. This book cover 7 chapter of Mallaca coinage; Mallaca tin animal money, Admiral Zheng He's tin cash coins, Sultanate tin coins, Portuguese occupation of Mallaca and Dutch Occupation of Mallaca.

This book come with complete illustration of the tin coin money. Some of the pictures are not in actual size and he stated that in coin information. It will be hard to identify any coin with a very good condition without an actual picture of the coin. This book also come with some history about the chapter he is covering. There is not much information about the history but it help me understand why people using tin money during that time.

For anyone who want to know the price of the tin coin money, this book doesn't provide any. The write only provided if any of the tin coin is scarce or very scarce. The detail of the tin coin money come complete with obverse reverse information, edge detail, coin weight, composition, diameter, period of coinage produce, mint and translation of the coinage if any. The composition is handle by Jabatan Kimia Malaysia (Malaysia Chemical Department). You can see almost all the tin coin money high point can be seen in the pictures.

For RM100, this book is a good addition for my coin book collection. My only suggestion for Uncle Tony is that if he want to publish a new edition of this book, an addition about a market price for the coin will make this book better. Maybe I still can bought this book from Uncle Tony since so few people collecting tin coin. For this past few years, I had seen many tin coin emerge for sale in coin dealer shop. Some of them is in low price with high point detail can be seen in most of the coin. I will be editing my post about the previous tin coin money later and add some information from this book. You can contact Uncle Tony at Telephone number 012-2662000 or email at tonylyefn@yahoo.com.