As a general rule, buffalo droppings aren't worth all that much, but the one Ronald Cristal is holding in his hands at his Bangkok office cost the Brooklyn-born Jewish lawyer a pretty penny when he acquired it at a sprawling weekend market in the Thai capital.

Should he choose to resell it, he could do so for around 100,000 baht, or $3,000.

There is a good reason for what may seem like a rather steep price for the black, badly pockmarked object that resembles a large, chunky beer coaster with a mangled rim. Despite its name, the in Cristal's hands has nothing to do with the bowel movements of water buffalo, those lumbering beasts of burden ubiquitous in parts of rural Southeast Asia.

To be sure, the 772-gram piece does bearmore than a passing resemblance to meadowmuffins deposited underfoot by incontinentungulates, but it is a type of money that wasin use in the 17th and 18th centuries in Luang Prabang, a quaint town in the mountainsof northern Laos, which was then the capitalof a small kingdom. This antique currencyis made of pure copper, but what makes itvaluable for Cristal, an avid numismatist, isits rarity.

says Cristal,80, a naturalized citizen of Thailand who alsogoes by Ronachai Krisadaolarn, his adopted moniker that means

he observes aproposof that collection, which he continues to ex-pand any chance he gets. Cristal is managing director of BangkokInternational Associates, a firm specializingin corporate and commercial law, where hisdesk is cluttered with prints of antique coinsshuffled among files on legal cases. Oneminute you'll find him scrolling through hiscomputer with meticulously cataloged photosof peculiarly shaped tokens, ingots and coins.The next he'll dash out from a room, only toreturn with an item he has just retrieved froma hefty safe to show you.

The minute after that, he'll fetch his authoritative reference guide on indigenous Thai - titled somewhat abstrusely to the uninitiated as Siamese Coins: FromFunan to the Fifth Reign - and flip open itsglossy pages here or there to yet more photographs. His magnum opus follows his two earlier books, The Centenary of Thai Banknotesand The Coins and Medals of the RattanakosinEra (the royal dynasty from 1782 to date), bothof which are standard volumes of Siamese numismatics published respectively by the Bankof Thailand and the Thai Treasury Department.

These seminal works have bolstered Cristal's claim to be the world's leading expert onpremodern forms of money from Siam, whicheven in the esoteric world of numismaticsmakes for an exotic field. Cristal explains.

Cristal has another surprise in store. Fromhis safe he retrieves a tray on which are nickel-sized objects featuring the Star of Davidsymbol inside a dotted circle, in a design thatresembles a wheel with hexagram-shapedspokes. The tokens hail from the Kingdom ofAyutthaya, north of Bangkok, whose cosmopolitan, religiously tolerant milieu appealed tothe Jewish merchants who began visiting andsettling there as early as the 17th century.

Were these coins made and used by the Jewish residents of the Siamese city? Beyond that, nothing much is known about them.

Howard adds:

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:
Ronald Cristal: The Jewish money man of Siam(https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-707110)