Unknown Chinese Coins Different Shapes #2

The big one on the left: Yuan You Tong Bao 2-Cash coin written in grass script. Cast from 1086-1093. Very common, worth $2-5.

The big one on the right: Another Chong Ning Zhong Bao 10-cash coin.

The small coin: Qian Lonng Tong Bao, cast from 1736-1795. This is the most common Chinese coin out there. The coin is clipped, so the coin is out of round. This was contemporary with the coin, likely to make a charm of some sort. This has a value of $0.25-0.50.

It doesn't really have a "meaning" as far as the coin itself is concerned; it's more a "mint error" than anything else.

Cash coins were produced in batches, and processed in batches. To remove the casting seam from the edge and to make the coins uniformly round, the square holes of each coin were pushed onto a rod with a square cross-section, so that a whole bunch of coins could all have their edges lathed off at once. If, however, there were additional splashes of metal partially blocking the hole of a particular coin, the coin might not go onto the rod quite that easily and it might have proved easier for the mint worker to ram the coin down onto the rod at a different angle to the one originally intended. Thus, the "rosette" is actually two overlapping squares: one which the rod was supposed to have been inserted into, and one which the rod made for itself when it was forced through the coin.

As with many other features of Chinese cash coins, once the coins were released into the population, local traditions arose about what the "meaning" of the eight-pointed holes on just a few of the coins might have been. Since they were "rarer" than normal cash coins, they were perceived as being "lucky" (don't forget, in Chinese numerology "4" is unlucky whereas "8" is lucky); therefore, many charms feature such a shaped hole deliberately made into them.