Hi all – I picked up this interesting coin (or coin replica?) jewelry at an antique shop recently, and after hours of research, I still can't figure out exactly what it is.  It was tagged as “Antique Yemeni Coin”, which I'm not surprised to find is probably wrong.  One side of this coin is similar to one side of certain coins from the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, but the other sides of my coin and the Mutawakkilite coin are a total mismatch.

However, the design of this coin is nearly a perfect match for an Ottoman hayriye altin from the reign of Mahmud II.  However, that is a small, gold coin.  This one is much larger, and definitely not gold.  

This coin is 34mm in diameter and roughly 2mm thick.  With the jewelry setting, wire, and bead it weights 17.4g, so presumably the coin itself weighs 16.x - 17.x grams.  My measurements are pretty crude, so the density could be anywhere between 9-10g/cm3, which would match anything from cupro-nickel on the low end to over 50% silver on the high end.  I see entries for coins from Mahmud II's reign in a wide variety of purities, from .170 to .220, .435, .465, .600, .730 and more, so that doesn't really rule anything out.

The other odd wrinkle is the ascension date and regnal year.  The ascension date (positioned beneath the tughra) looks weird--almost like 222.  However, I think it's 1223, as it should be, just off-kilter to the left, with much of the 1 in 1223 cut off.  The regnal date (above the tughra) looks like 71, which is impossible.  However, I found examples of real hayriye altin coins with regnal year 21 where the stem (the vertical line) of the 2 was very diminished, so I'm guessing that's what happened here.

I did read about less-developed or further-out Ottoman vassal states making semi-authorized copies (?) of Ottoman coins minted elsewhere, but that seems to have happened closer to the end of the Ottoman Empire (though perhaps re-minting old coins was a way to add legitimacy or avoid issues of counterfeiting).  I also found an old thread on another forum that referenced the Kingdom of Darfur sometimes using regnal year 71 around the turn of the 20th century to commemorate a past ruler.  The thread was thin on information, though, and I couldn't find any examples that looked like this coin.

So… what do I have here?  I couldn't find anything definitive about larger silver or base-metal coins that used the hayriye altin design, so between that and the dates being weirdly inscribed (despite the design itself being, if anything, suspiciously clear), I'm guessing it's some sort of replica?  Of course, a real rare coin or trial piece would be super cool, but even a contemporary replica would still be neat to have.  Even a modern replica with some silver in it would at least be worth a few bucks.

Ottoman coin/replica help? Mahmud II hayriye altin design, but bigger and not gold