China Empire Dollar (7 Mace 2 Candareens) Fake Until Proven Not...

Some grading companies have a lower cost service without grading- they just confirm if the coin is genuine or not. A ring tone can be misleading- just like the magnet test can be misleading. Since the coin is obviously not so nice, why not try a micro-spot of bleach in a not-so-great looking place? It will make a black spot if silver. And you will know if it's not silver if it doesn't make a black spot. But then you may not want to have a black spot on your coin. I do this in some test cases where a small blotch doesn't matter.

Yes but yours sure doesn't look plated based on the pictures. I'm still curious about the center. It looks like an unexpected added mark or symbol that I don't find among my references. Getting better pics and a N-52 neodymium magnet could be very useful in this case as well as others that may come up as you acquire more coins. I have a standard array of sizes all suspended in front of me now as I view the monitor on the desk. It' the first or second thing I do when checking for coin silver. A large coin, if good silver will push the magnet away. Naturally if it grabs we know what that is. But if it does nothing (has no reaction at all) then that can indicate white metal or "pot metal" or some other combo which cannot be good coin silver. Actually I found an exception to this test and that is Sterling Silver and some other silver coins from Sinkiang. That should not be the case here. I have good and bad Kiangnan dollars and they behave as I described. A ring test is something that I have also learned can be misleading. If you search online for methods to test for coin silver at home you can find a variety of useful chats or videos.

Keep in mind when you get opinions coming in about characters and lettering that there are a lot of these coins that were made varying in style. There may be 10 or so varieties having differences in some places or another. So you cannot simply say one is good or bad by comparing it to one particular coin. The ice melt test can be done if you have no magnet and I've seen that demonstrated. It's not fool-proof (hardly anything is). But if it melts ice as fast as silver or as slow as typical Chinese fake dollars, that can be a good clue. Take a large copper-nickel crown and a known silver crown and drop a small piece of ice on them and see how fast silver melts compared to the other. Then do the same with your Kiangnan coin.

Use a microphone and sound recorder to save a file of each pitch. A suspect coin can ring at a higher or lower pitch that can be compared when you play back both files. The better pics are welcome and it's looking more and more like a fake. Those central Manchu characters don't look right and especially with that added item in the middle of the 4 characters. Take a look online at images of the Manchu words for Kuang Hsu.