Chopmarked Silver Coins

A genuine chop would have come from a Chinese or South East Asian shroff (money changer) primarily during the late 18th century through 19th century. Their ability to detect counterfeits was limited to their familiarity with the particular Trade dollar and the quality of their measurements for weight and specific gravity. Our CCF colleague, swamperbob, asserts that many high-quality portrait 8 reales restrikes were sent to China so it's likely many of these were chopped, too.

Sometimes they cast fake coins with chopmarks already on them, those are much easier to identify.

Lol... fake is fake

looks like it reads ding on the front. Ding is 46th most common surname in the PRC

does this coin look real?

I would highly recommand you to read up on the history of chopmarks.

Chopmarks are essentially a mean for merchants to test whether the coin has silver content in it or plated silver or debased silver. This was their means of testing for counterfeit.

You may see examples with little to multiple chopmarks. As of why there was a need to do multiple chopmarks, merchants back then have already realized that having some chopmarks on coins do not mean a thing to them - they still have to physically test it to find out if they are indeed genuine or not.

This applies to all types of silver including smaller silver denomination although you would find chopmarks on smaller denomination coins a lot less common.

Personally I take them as damaged coins. Some find it collectable; I buy them only if the price is right.

As to answer if the above coin is genuine or not, standard test still apply. Couple of questions one should ask is the weight of the coin and how the edge looks like. Chances are, it's likely to be genuine but you can never be sure when you are dealing with such coins.

This page may be of interest and illustrates a good example of how chopmarks do not guarantee authenticity of the coin.

https://registry.ngccoin.hk/news/ar...irin-dollar/