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Bedrock of the Community
United Kingdom
17999 Posts |
The left-hand coin in Set 4 is a British Trade dollar. From the small size of the photo I can't tell if it's genuine or not. Welcome to the Forum!  |
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New Member
United States
6 Posts |
I use a pretty good website to ID foriegn coins. Search "Don's World Coin Gallery". I have to fish around and guess alot, but I have been able to ID most stuff I dig out of the bargian bin. Hope they are real treasures.
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Valued Member
United States
453 Posts |
Also the ngc lists the maxxico coin at 8 to 10 dollars so thats pretty good
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New Member
 Singapore
6 Posts |
Thank you all, for your replies!!  Finn235: WOW!! I took your advice and googled for Chinese Cash ID, and got to this site: http://www.sportstune.com/chinese/c...idpage1.html ... Turns out that the coins are from the Ching dynasty, and from the 1700s! I'm so psyched that I am holding onto such a piece of history! And the thing about the Chinese locals dumping these on unwitting tourists might solve the mystery of how these coins ended up in my family! hehe! :D srcliff: Do you mean this site: http://www.ngccoin.com/poplookup/wo...egory=141481 ? If so, then wow again!! Does that mean China "the orient" made these long ago? But it's really strange that China would want to create such a coin for mexico... Do you know if it was really mexican currency then, or is it just a curio that had no monetary value? Aslan TVorlon: Thanks for the welcome!! hmmmm I got them in the late '80s... is that long-ago enough? *crosses fingers* lol... And by fake, does that mean that mexico really had valid currency back then of this design? NumisRob: Thanks for the welcome too!! :) Ok I have uploaded larger pics of the British Trade coin here.. Please let me know if you would prefer larger pics.. Looking forward to your expert opinion! :)   krockit: I went to Don's World Coin Gallery, but found navigating the site to be too much of an adventure hahaha... When I selected one of the china entries in the drop down menu on the right, all I saw was a mind-boggling list of coins with names (e.g., y255 Republic 10 Cents - no date) I could not interpret... I couldn't figure out where to click to get pics of each of these coins... :( |
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Moderator
 Australia
16865 Posts |
Welcome, Helen. I wish we had better news for you but, sadly, we don't. The Chinese cash coins - the copper ones with the square holes in them - are all probably genuine, although these coins have also been known to be faked even though they are relatively cheap and common. Despite being so old, they are very cheap, since so many of them were made; official records from the period show billions of cash coins were made in some years and the Qian Long emperor reigned for a very long time, with virtually no change in design of his coins. The dollar-sized "silver" coins are, I'm afraid, all fakes. Fake "Chinese dollars" have been around since at least the 1960s, though before the Internet Age you had to actually go to China or Hong Kong to find them in bulk. Some of them have been copied from some extremely rare "pattern" coins; others (such as the "Maaxico" coin) are more properly termed "fantasies" rather than "fakes", since there never was a genuine coin like that to begin with. Grab a magnet off the fridge and see if it sticks to any of them. A magnet sticking means it's a steel fake. If the magnet doesn't stick, then it might be genuine. The British Trade dollar looks the most convincing, although if you got it from the same place as the rest of the coins then it too is almost certainly fake. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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New Member
Singapore
6 Posts |
Hi Sap, and thanks for your welcome and your insight!! =) I dashed to my fridge for a magnet, and it didn't stick to any of the coins!! That's a good sign, I guess?! Hehe! Hmm I got these coins so young, that I don't even remember who exactly handed them to me and whether the british Trade dollars were given to me at the same time... Just that it was a family member... So say if the china coins were to be genuine... Is there any definitive way to tell, and if so, how much would they be worth? |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
1041 Posts |
helan I got. got last weekend they are fakes welcome to the club
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Valued Member
Australia
315 Posts |
Helen |
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Valued Member
United States
453 Posts |
I found the Maxxico coin very interesting and although I found several of them on e-bay I would have to say that they are much more modern than the 1884 on the coin. I'm not sure if some one minted them to trick other locals into thinking it was Mexican currency or what. My theory is that by using the name of a country that doesn't exist the person producing this coin lowered his risk of being charged with forgery. Its a rather interesting mystery but I don't think worth much.
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Moderator
Australia
16865 Posts |
Quote:
My theory is that by using the name of a country that doesn't exist the person producing this coin lowered his risk of being charged with forgery. That might be true in other countries, but not China. It is not illegal to make fake coins in the PRC (unless they are fake PRC coins, in which case they're in big trouble if they get caught). I think the "Maxxico" coins came about originally from someone with little command of English, or the Western alphabet generally. But tourists kept buying them, so they kept making them. And in case you're wondering what shanew is on about, he recently bought an entire album of "silver dollars"; sadly, every single one of them was fake. Back to Helen's questions. Passing the magnet test does not mean they are genuine, only that they are not steel. There are plenty of other tests you can try. If you have access to an electronic balance or scales that can weigh to the nearest 0.1 grams, weigh them; genuine silver dollars weigh around 27 grams. The fakes can weigh as low as 18. Again, passing the weight test does not mean they are genuine, only that they are not underweight fakes. There aren't any general rules to apply as to appearance; you sort of have to go through them case-by-case. Set 1 top left is actually a copy of a Japanese silver yen from 1870. While the pic is too small to be absolutely sure, even from this distance the details do not look right; the leaf-wreath, in particular, looks too coarse. Here's a genuine one on NGC. Set 1 top right also claims to be an 1870 Japanese yen, but it is a "fantasy dollar"; no such genuine coin was ever actually made in Japan, though a few were apparently made in China as local copies a hundred years ago. Those "contemporary fantasies" have been given a listing in the "Unusual World Coins" book of unofficial coins and so also appear on NGC. Set 1 bottom left is an early Chinese "Junk dollar" (that's "junk" as in the type of boat, not "junk" as in rubbish) known as the birds-and-sun type. This particular design was unpopular when it was in circulation: made in 1932, the Rising Sun and the birds flying overhead reminded too many people of the Japanese bombers (Japan invaded China in 1933); subsequent Junk Dollars had the birds and sun removed. Here it is on NGC. I can tell yours is not genuine because the two Chinese characters on either side of the boat are too close to the rim, but another way to tell many of the fake birds-and-rays dollars is this: the "rays" are supposed to form straight lines that carry through from one side of the ship to the other, but on the fakes there are often discontinuities. Here's some pics I made to illustrate, based on a pic of another fake Junk Dollar someone posted earlier on the forum. Junk Junk: ray on far side of sail does not line up with the same ray coming out of the sun. Also note how the two characters are nearly touching the rim, and the general crudeness of the design.  Good Junk: ray lines up perfectly.  Set 1 bottom right is another "fantasy dollar"; this one is based on patterns made in Europe in an effort to convince the Chinese government to order coins from them. The original unofficial patterns are listed in UWC and the listing (unfortunately without pictures) can be seen here. Genuine examples never made it to China so are very, very unlikely to be sold from there. The stories for the coins in your other Sets are similar: a mixture of possibly-genuine coins with impossible fantasies. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
United States
172 Posts |
Hi Helen! Your British Trade dollar looks pretty convincing to me. If it's a fake, it's much higher quality than most. I'm not an expert and these coins are very often faked so I don't want to get your hopes too high. But I can usually see errors in such fakes right away and I'm just not seeing them in your coin. If it really came from a different source, that would be significant. I would never trust a coin from the same source as your other coins. By the way, don't attempt to clean it. If it is real, that would harm its value. |
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Valued Member
United States
453 Posts |
Good old Wikipedia has a picture similar to the Trade dollar with the lady with spear in your last set. I really don't have much knowledge of these coins or a really good eye but as mentioned above, if anything is real it may be that one. |
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New Member
Singapore
6 Posts |
[It finally occurred to me to use the formatting tools available above... lol] srcliff: Yes I was weirded out when I saw the Maxxico America coin... lol I didn't remember this coin within the stash, and it's been years since I last took them out to erm, play with them (yes, play... *grimace* I was a silly 6 year-old back then) From the google results for "maxxico", it appears that these Maxxico coins showed up around the early 2000's.. But since I got my hands on them in the late 80's, I'm pretty sure these coins pre-date the early 2000's... And as for the British Trade Coins, the wiki page says that there could be mint marks of "B" and "C" on the trident or near the shield respectively... Now I'm really curious to know whether my coins have these mint marks.. Couldn't tell from the pics on my computer, so i'll go dig the actual coins out (tomorrow morning haha).. Sap: Gosh, I'm just blown away by how much you know about the coins.... plus their histories too! Yes, upon comparison with the pictures of the genuine coins, I can definitely see that the designs on my coins aren't as focused and sharp as they could, or should, be... And the thing about the rays following through is hilarious! One would think that the counterfeiters would have paid more attention to such details haha.. I guess I'm disappointed that these china coins didn't turn out to be genuine, but I'll still hold onto them as a keepsake... I'm quite protective of family heirlooms, even though I can't specifically identify the relative who gave them to me hehehe...  Meanwhile, I'll go trawl through NGC to try to find genuine versions of the coins in the other sets.. :) Many thanks for your help in solving some of the mysteries which surrounded these coins!  RogerRamjet: Yay I'm so glad to hear that!! I can't remember if it was the same family member who had given me these Trade coins, but when I finally dug my whole bag of coins out from the abyss of my closet last week, the counterfeit china coins were wrapped separately from these trade coins and the (genuine) Qing Dynasty coins.. The latter 2 types were in a small metal tin, which was also probably their original packaging when they first came to me Would you happen to know if these trade coins are wholly made of silver, or is it just some other metal? And assuming that they are genuine, would you also happen to know how much these would be worth?  coinsaus: Thanks for the welcome!! shanew: Oh dear I'm so sorry to hear about your silver dollars... hope the damage isn't too great  I would be so mad!! |
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Valued Member
United States
172 Posts |
Here are some details about British Trade dollars... https://www.ngccoin.com/poplookup/w...mSearch=truePrices are only rough guidelines. Grading is subjective but yours is probably in the VF20 to XF40 range. My recommendation is to focus on verifying proper weight next. As Sap said, good fakes can have the proper weight but most fakes don't. Hope that helps! |
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New Member
Singapore
6 Posts |
niceeeeee! hopefully they check out on the scales too :) Thanks, RogerRamjet!! |
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Posted 03/01/2014 6:23 pm
