Ancient Chinese Boshan Knife - Just Bought My Rarest Coin!

Thank you all for the positive input!

The estimated start date is 600 BC, but there is no evidence to confirm that. The advantage your Lydian coin has is that is can be proven to be as old as 600 BC. There's no way to do that for Chinese coins.

The Chinese knives and spades were used as money because they were too dull and structurally weak to be used as anything else. However, from what I've read, for a coin to be a coin, it needs to have some mark of an issuing authority. Otherwise, the object is just proto-money. My earliest spade and knife coin both have inscriptions, so, technically, they are both coins.

Spade coins, however, have some stronger evidence for an early start date. There are poems and songs that mention spades that date to 500 BC. For spades to be regarded as a form of money by 500 BC, they must have had an earlier start date for the concept to be readily accepted and diffused into Chinese society.

Various scholars (Schjoth for example) believe(d) that the Qi knives were from ca 900 BC, but that has been debunked on many levels, so your avatar is safe in that respect.

There are other contenders for pre-600 BC coins (the Ionian striated staters and the Phanes series of Ephesus come to mind), and I think some Indian punchmarked pieces are known from 6th century BC, but not 7th (though the dating for them is about as confusing as that for Chinese coins).
And don't even ask me about Olbian dolphins (the dating for these is all over the place, I've seen everything from 7th to 2nd century BC).

TL/DR: as far as anyone can tell, coins (or something that vaguely resembled coins) were invented independently in Asia Minor, India and China, apparently within a century of each other. Asia Minor was probably slightly earlier, but the specific issuer that made the first coins there is still somewhat uncertain (it might well not be Lydia).

Glad that you have it hand, but bummered about the newly reopened fracture. These things must be kinda brittle, no?

It's a tough call when something you want so badly, which you thought you had, slips away because the vendor did not handle it properly. You will surely go through the 5 stages. If this had been an ebay transaction, even ebay would stand behind you in a claim against the seller - but then you have to give it up. I hope the seller will own up to responsibility for the loss, and grant you a significant price adjustment so you can keep it as a spacefiller.

And I hope a replacement surfaces in the short term.





I don't think that is when it fractured, even if that is when it came apart. I suspect that the knife was not protected from bending while in transit, and that other mailed items cracked it through whatever packing material it was in. You will need to use something to stiffen the package, such as a wooden tongue depresser parallel to the blade, to support it for the back and forth. And mark it FRAGILE.

Let me elaborate. It was wrapped in tissue paper, and that was taped in between two styrofoam blocks. Then this was placed into a medium-sized box and surrounded with packing bubbles. It was well-packed. When I was unpacking the knife, I cut the tape to minimize the amount of force to extract the knife from the package.

Just as an update to this thread, I found two more for sale. They are the same size and variety as mine, and they are both broken and repaired. Also, they are priced at three times what I paid for mine!

http://www.numismall.com/acc/284-27...e-money.html

http://www.numismall.com/acc/284-27...d-China.html

Perfect!