Old Chinese Coin Found In East Hampton, NY

What is your question?

It is a 1 cash coin of the emperor Kao tsung (1736-1795). This is very common.

If you are wondering how it got there, the simple answer is that someone brought it from China and dropped it there. There was a lot of trade between China and the rest of the world and plenty of coins came over. Or maybe it was dumped there in a pile of refuse from the ship, or a collector dropped it there, maybe on purpose. I think that you get the picture-many plausible reasons, none which can be known with certainty. I certainly do not find any mystery to finding a common coin near a busy port.

That being said, it is an interesting find for sure and certainly you would not find a lot of them buried there. Not like in China where they still find monstrous hoards.

One of the funnest parts of metal detecting is researching the finds. It brings a coin back from the dead and tells a story within a local angle. I've never thought about the Chinese in context of the colonial east coast. Here is what Wiki has to say: "Shortly after the American Revolutionary War, as the United States had recently begun transpacific maritime trade with Qing, Chinese came into contact with American sailors and merchants at the commercial port of Canton (Guangzhou). There, local individuals heard about opportunities and became curious about America. The main trade route between the United States and China then was between Canton and New England, where the first Chinese arrived via Cape Horn (the only route as the Panama Canal did not exist). These Chinese were mainly merchants, sailors, seamen, and students who wanted to see and acquaint themselves with a strange foreign land they had only heard about. However, their presence was mostly temporary and only a few settled permanently." Add to this that Sag Harbor was made the official port of entry to the US in 1789 with ships calling in from around the world. When the whaling industry collapsed in 1847 due to the discovery of petrochemicals for oil lamps, the whaling fleets of Sag Harbor shifted over to carrying miners to California beginning with the gold rush of 1849. This would create interactions with Chinese immigrants working on the west coast. Also, the Spanish had pressed Chinese into serving on ships.