Posted 12/28/2011 10:48 pm
Unfortunately, no, it's not real, but a modern machine-struck replica. The synthetic spotty background is better than on some modern replicas, but the tiny triangles give it away. Genuine cast coins have a chaotic mottled pattern. Further, the style of writing, particularly the Manchu on the reverse, is utterly unlike anything that appeared on a real coin.
Sorry, but they do. These modern replicas are widely made and used for ritual purposes (funeral rites, feng shui ornamentation, that sort of thing). Genuine cash coins come in a wide variety of sizes and thicknesses, especially the later types that are most commonly encountered in the marketplace. In many non-specialist coin dealers, you can find a bowl labelled "Chinese cash coins - $2 each", in which fakes and genuine coins happily sit side by side.
Someone making, for example, feng shui coin swords needs hundreds of coins that all have identical width, thickness and hole size, otherwise the swords would come out looking scraggly and uneven. That was easy to do over a hundred years ago when cash coins were in common use, but these days it's far easier for such a person to order a bucketful of freshly-minted artificially-aged machine-identical coins than to try to trawl through buckets of mixed genuine cash coins looking for matching examples. And apparently, the evil spirits can't tell the difference between fake coins and real ones.
Quote:
I can't picture anyone faking a inexpensive coin.
I can't picture anyone faking a inexpensive coin.
Sorry, but they do. These modern replicas are widely made and used for ritual purposes (funeral rites, feng shui ornamentation, that sort of thing). Genuine cash coins come in a wide variety of sizes and thicknesses, especially the later types that are most commonly encountered in the marketplace. In many non-specialist coin dealers, you can find a bowl labelled "Chinese cash coins - $2 each", in which fakes and genuine coins happily sit side by side.
Someone making, for example, feng shui coin swords needs hundreds of coins that all have identical width, thickness and hole size, otherwise the swords would come out looking scraggly and uneven. That was easy to do over a hundred years ago when cash coins were in common use, but these days it's far easier for such a person to order a bucketful of freshly-minted artificially-aged machine-identical coins than to try to trawl through buckets of mixed genuine cash coins looking for matching examples. And apparently, the evil spirits can't tell the difference between fake coins and real ones.
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
