Chinese Coin Of The Day 2

Both pics are upside down.

This "coin" is another impossible mule, like #1. The obverse (top pic) is based on a Yunnan dollar, with the side florets replaced with badly drawn bats - bats are an animal of good luck in Chinese mythology. The reverse is taken from an extremely scarce pattern 1 tael; a similar copy is here on zeno.ru, though that one has the denomination "half tael" while the denomination on yours is "7 mace 2" - the character for "candareens" has been omitted from your coin, perhaps to make the number of characters match that on the tael series.

How do I know all this? We had one exactly like yours here on the forum a while ago.

warjag In the majority of cases, these forgeries are VERY recent. Some if not all are still in production. These began flooding the west about 30 years ago. Most came home with returning Vietnam Vets. At that time, I was not really interested in Chinese coins (too busy with my Bust Half dollar collection) but I certainly recall seeing them. The fantasy mules first came to my attention in 1996 when I bought a collection of 25 different impossible mules for $1 each.

if this was the real thing, I wonder how old it would be....