Unknown Chinese Dragon Coins Help?

Haha too good to be true. Okay can you give me a better idea of which details. Say for the first pic of Yunnan province coin? I'm just curious

There's no easy tricks when it comes to Chinese coins. Yes, there are some easier diagosis to filter out the lower quality counterfeits but here's my best advice - if you are dealing with Chinese coins, make sure you know what you are looking at otherwise you are much better off playing lottery.

Here are the easier diagosis:

1) Wrong weight - i.e +- 5-10% off. For instance if a Chinese silver crown is supposed to weight around 26.7g and what you have is 25g, it cannot be genuine unless it's damaged or some parts were cut off. But why buy it? Even chopmarked coins weigh around the same so even 2gram loss is a lot.
2) Magnetic. There were some coins that were struck in steel but when it comes to silver crowns and if they are magnetic, how do you think it's possible? Silver are not magnetic and it's only iron and pure nickel that are. (cobalt as well but that's not used for coinage)
3) Unusual denomination. If you think you got lucky with denominations such as 1 tael, thirty cash, 500 cash, and so on, good luck. These are not common.
4) Poor details. You really need to start knowing what you are getting into. If the text seems weak or crude, not going to happen. Of course there are genuine coins with really poor details but that's another story.
5) Source. If you are not buying from a reputable coin dealer, why should you trust "I inherited this coin collection from my grandfather"? Of course some stories may be the real deal but some coins may be counterfeited around the same time.
6) Price. If the price is too good to be true, something is not right unless the seller is ignorant or is trying to cheat you.

The above "coins" all share two similar problems:

Poor details and the rims are just too thick. Color is not right as well. Also the denomination 3 mace 6 candareens - half dollar size coins are generally worth more than the crown size coins, hence are heavily counterfeited.

For examples of genuine Chinese coins including silver, please feel free to visit my page:

http://www.gxseries.com/numis/china...province.htm

Shows an example from each province.

Magnetics! brilliant...thanks!

I'm not going to trust what the auction house says is right. The above coins are all modern reproduction and I just don't think whatever they had at that time are genuine antiques.

I gave the above link thumbs down. Here's a simple fact: silver crowns are NOT magnetic no matter what they are. The only coins that were magnetic are coins struck in 1930-40s for smaller denomination coins. The above coins were all supposedly struck in late 1800s to early 1910s. The only available metals were either silver, copper, nickel, antimony (not common) or gold (rare). Steel was only used in the 1930s prior to WWII as nickel and copper were used during the war against the Japanese. The only time they are magnetic are when they are not genuine. It's as simple as that. Some seller might want to give excuses that they are rare trial examples but I know none.

How about some examples of counterfeits to have a better understanding. Here's one that shows crude details and is clearly counterfeit because it's muled with the wrong dies:



Jiangnan Province in Chinese but on the reverse Hubei Province. Don't think so.



Dragon just looks wierd and it is a counterfeit. Underweight at 4.87g versus 5.2g for original coins.



English text is out of whack even though it's well imitated. Severely underweight at 4.57g.



This is hilarious. 31mm versus 35mm. Too small and it just looks like a token.

These are still very crude counterfeits and are easy to tell even looking at these pictures. Wait till it gets to the harder ones - you just cannot tell. Here are a couple of the tougher ones:



Gansu yuan. If genuine, it's a 10,000+ dollar coin. Weight: 26.5g, edge, within tolerance. Passes silver test, edge test etc. But it's not genuine. Why? This is one of the tougher coins because some counterfeiter must have overstruck on a genuine silver dollar coin. Sure, you might argue that the mint might have tested it first but the details do not match known examples. I'll give credit to the counterfeiter.



Weight: 26.9g. Slightly overweight but still ok. Yet this is a counterfeit. Why? Details are just not right and from the wierd toning after exposing it to air, it just doesn't seem silver. Pretty intriguing isn't it?

Welcome to the world of Chinese coins. Best not to expect bargains with Chinese coins especially if you don't know what you are looking at.