5 Yuan Shi Kai Year 10 (1921)

Why? To test the market to see if anyone wants to buy fantasy pieces.

I have no reason why I should be supporting counterfeits / fantasies. This is not something I am going to budge on and is non-negotiable.

At one stage during the early days (1930 - 50s?), Eduard Kann was in China describing fantasies as "mint sports" where the private mints were striking coins that either didn't exist or making mules of coins + medals and so forth. The reason is purely simple - corruption was typically high and there was always buyers. Whether this design was part of the "mint sports" or not, it's still something that counterfeiters were testing their market to see if there were any buyers.

Why are any kind of Chinese replica/fantasy coins made? The simple answer, I suppose, is that it "works" - they can sell them for more than it cost them to make. Given how often these types appear in flea markets etc, I suspect the key market for them is tourists who don't know that this was never officially released as a coin design. Tourists seem to like buying big, showy things, and these large "5 yuan coins" are bigger than normal silver dollars.