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NEW IMAGES OF ISIS COINAGEPeter Preston-Morley forwarded this message about ISIS coinage from James Bevan of the Conflict Armament Research organization. Thanks! With permission, we're publishing it
here with images. -Editor
 5, 2 and 1 dirham coins dated 1437 (Oct 2015-Oct 2016) These were recovered from an Islamic State position and documented by a Conflict Armament Research field investigation team in al-Qaim, Iraq, 23 January 2018. We conduct investigations into the supplies of weapons and associated materiel to terrorist groups worldwide. To do so we deploy on the ground in war zones. This week we recovered a range of weapons and ammunition from Islamic State (IS or Daesh) forces’ positions on the Iraq-Syria border. Among the weapons, we recovered numerous examples of the attached IS-minted coinage. I limited knowledge of numismatics, but have since consulted several sites which purport to show the forms of IS currency minted since 2015. These do not accord with our finds and I am inclined to think that few people have viewed this coinage in the metal. For this reason, I wanted to share the attached images with you, which I took this morning, for the following reasons: 1. I assume that counterfeits of IS coinage already exist and are being traded; 2. Current sources on the internet appear to diverge on the form of the coinage and do not accord with what we have found. 3. We recovered the items during military operations against confirmed IS positions and can confirm that the coins were definitively in service with IS forces at the time of recovery. I hope that this information will help members of the society in clarifying facts in the years to come. To this effect, please find attached images of the following: 1 dirham coin dated 1437 (Oct 2015-Oct 2016) 2 dirham coin dated 1437 (Oct 2015-Oct 2016) 5 dirham coin dated 1437 (Oct 2015-Oct 2016) I provided Mr. Bevan with links to several previous E-Sylum articles on the topic. His images correspond closely to the ones sent to us most recently, and differ greatly
from ones reported to us from eBay and other internet sources. Here are the ones we published January 7, 2018 from a gentleman "embedded with the YPG forces in Dier ez-Zor in Syria." NOTE:
YPG is an acronym whose translation means People's Protection Units. It is the home-grown defense force of the Kurdish area of Syria. I've attempted to correct the image orientation.
-Editor
         James Bevan adds: I think the ones provided by the guy working with the YPG are legitimate. YPG are currently in Deir ez-Zor, which I can confirm. Copper I have not seen, but the design is consistent. His silver ones are identical to ours, and the weights of silver written on the coins are correct. Based on these datapoints, I wouldn't be surprised if the pieces which surfaced on the internet are just fantasy issues created to capitalize on the publicity surrounding
ISIS coins. Here are some of the coin images acquired from unnamed internet sources - these are clearly cut from a different cloth.-Editor
  What do readers think? -Editor
For more information on the Conflict Armament Research organization, see: To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:  Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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