Chinese Silver Coin Help Me Please!

The denticles don't look even to me, especially around 11 o'clock on the bottom photo. Nice photos, btw.

Oh, and to CCF!

to the community.

If this coin is fake, they did an excellent job on it. To me the coin looks legit. I'm looking for a reference on it but so far haven't found anything yet. Did you buy the coin from a dealer or off e-Bay?

Thanks for the replies. I found it in a box of stuff I bought at a yard sale earlier this year. I was looking to sell some of my silver coins and started looking around online for info on this before I go to sell it. Can anyone tell me the value if it is real. And if its fake?

Thanks

Dan

For some reason I don't see any Kwang-Si taels in the catalog.

Here 's a discussion on a similar coin, though much more crude a counterfeit.

I think you are dealing with a Fantasy coin - a fabrication made to resemble a coin that was never issued. In some respects, like the way it is toned, it looks like the non-silver forgeries made recently in China. Have you checked it with a magnet? The die work - primarily the lettering looks incorrect - a bit like a computer engraved coin. There is also a "collar" line (near Tael) that is quite far into the rim and could point to a forgery as well.

Have you checked the edge of the coin to see if it is correct?

The weight is correct for a Tael.

Here's a tip that I personally would recommand - avoid Empire Chinese crown size coins because chances are if they are genuine, you are talking about easily hundreds of dollars, if not thousands. Times have changed. Most of the genuine coins would have been cherrypicked or the market is flooded with so much counterfeits, you are much better off playing the lottery.

First get smaller denomination coins - most of these are not counterfeited yet although they are starting to creep in. You need to acknowledge that genuine Chinese coins can be quite expensive and that if you want to be smart in the game, you need to start getting catalog. Books aren't that expensive - you probably would have spent more money on buying counterfeit than buying a couple of decent books. I bought two books that features Empire silver and copper coins for under 20USD and that includes expensive shipping all the way to Australia. You don't need to be able to read Chinese to look at photos. It gives you a good feel of what genuine coins may look like. That should help you avoid the more common counterfeits.

The above coin that shows the denomination tael - it's mainly struck as pattern coin so it's another high possiblity that it's not genuine. Also silver ring test doesn't mean a thing - you can get a similar ring with nickel alloy. Whatever the alloy is, I have no idea of the exact content but I remember having trouble telling the difference between silver and that alloy.

Here are the pics of my one tael coin





UncleMike

As a collector of counterfeits - I find these coins interesting - but of little or no value. When I attended the Boston Coin show in November I got 64 different Chinese fantasy crowns for $30,

These for the most part are made with very modern copying techniques. The dies are created using high quality photographs of an original coin. The photos can be touched up to remove defects. Then the dies or molds are created by a computer assisted engraver (perhaps laser) to actually cut the die/mold. All of the raised details (the recessed areas in the die/mold) tend to show grainy surfaces which are typical of that method. The fields of the die can be polished to remove the texture.