CHINA or Thailand - Lead Cyprea Moneta Cowrie

The Opitz Collection of imitation cowries presented here contained several lead cowries that were great copies of Cyprea Moneta types, including the detail of shoulders and bumps. Three are about this size and two more are smaller ones, one of those being a middle size. Much like the obols and staters of the ancient Greek world. They're presented here in the Moneta Museum too. It's dimensions are 23 mm x 17.5 mm x 11.5 mm, and weighs 22.35 g.; the other two examples are very similar in size.
The following from a Steve Album Auction (9/2021): "lead cowries from Northern Thailand, weighing 22.46g, 8.32g, and 4.60g. These detailed lead alloy cowries ("pee") have been called tokens, or burial pieces, but specimens always cluster around weights of 4.7, 8.2, and 25 grams at roughly a 1:2:6 ratio, indicating a denomination sequence.
I was the lucky winner in Kagin's Auction (Mar 2021) Lot# 4233. It consisted of 19 examples that were previously in the Nate S Shapiro Collection and displayed at the Detroit Money Museum. These were acquired before 1960 but were sold when the Museum closed (~1992). In ancient China cowrie seashells (Cyprea Moneta & C. Annulus) were so valuable that imitations were made to serve as money and grave items.
All of the number tags, unfortunately glued to most of the specimens in the museum collection, are a characteristic of all Charles Opitz collection pieces.

Moneta Library has articles on Cowries to VIEW and DOWNLOAD:
The Worlds's First Money, Chinese Cowries and Their Imitations - by Ted Puls: [ link ]
Cowries - Bob Reis: [ link ]
Origin of Cowries in Ancient China - UofPa: [ link ]
Metallic Cowries - Royal Asiatic Society: [ link ]
Nice Video on Cowrie history: [ link ]
An excellent article in ANA's "Numismatist" magazine, Oct 2017 > [ link ]
SEE how far back in time decorative sea shells were important to prehistoric man at his : [ link ]
Interested in Primitive Money? Then check out this YouTube video created by Kagins Auctions featuring Bob Leonard and Charles Opitz upon the massive sale in March 2021. Click this: [ link ]

The following is by Bob Reis, a prominent numismatic dealer and author:
There are two aspects to cowrie substitutes. One was that cowries had value, it was custom of the time to bury the dead with grave goods, over time the grave goods became more and more imitations of the real thing. The other was that in regions where cowries were scarce they might make imitations for the market, because something was better than nothing.
There are a variety of small bronze items that have been speculatively considered to have been some kind of local money, but they are not mentioned in the classical Chinese monetary and numismatic books. Notwithstanding, some of these objects are found in such large quantities that it seems reasonable to consider them as money objects. The idea that enigmatic bronze objects were early forms of Chinese “money” was popularized in Europe by a monograph written by H. A. Ramsden in 1912.
Zhou dynasty was a confederation of little kingdoms with a figurehead Emperor. Various constituent states started using money in their commercial activities. Odd shaped coins such as spade, knife, ant, nose, yibi, and possible money items like fish and cicada money were followed by the early round coins.
The oldest Chinese coins are at least as old as the earliest Greek coins. The Chinese coinage system differed from other systems in two ways. It was monometallic, only bronze coins circulated in general commerce. Gold and silver were treated as commodities. And the manufacturing method was by casting in moulds rather than by striking heated solid planchets.