Help Please Chinese Spade Money Is It Fake?

First of all, a warm welcome here! Although I hate to break it to you, I'm afraid both your coins are unfortunately fake. As you might know, the ancient Chinese coin market is filled with fakes, both excellent fakes and less so. Yours fall somewhere in the middle I am afraid. First of all, the patinas are artificial and even from the photo's look a little flaky. The calligraphy is wrong on both pieces, although the one on your second spade is a little better. For the first spade, you already mention that it is filled with metal; this is a dead giveaway for it being a fake. You might find this (http://goccf.com/t/278700) topic interesting. Written by Typecoin, our authentication expert on this forum, he, knowing it was fake, also bought a hollow head spade filled up with metal.

Should they have been real; The first one is a hollow-head spade (one of the earliest in the spade coin chronology, something like 450 BC to 300 BC), inscribed either Guan Shi or Guan kao (Hartill 2.165), one of the rarer hollow head spades, having a Hartill rarity rating of 2 (translating in at minimum 2000 USD, but I have not seen a genuine one for sale for quite a while, so you should be thinking more towards 10000 in the right auction.). These are generally associated with the Zhou and Jin states, but we can't be sure. The second is a so called Dang jin spade, about their inscription (Pei Bi Dang Jin, most likely). The reverse mentions the denomination, namely 10 Huo. These spades are a little later, dating from around 350 to 250 BC, originating from the state of Chu. These coins are a little less rare, but there is a high demand from them, so they will also sell for a significant amount.

As someone who specialises (tries to, anyway) in Chinese pre-Han coinage, it always breaks my heart to see such a fake spade. Might I ask where you got these? Many of the spades and knives listed on ebay are fakes, but non as treacherous as those from seller Best66666, who claims to be Dutch, but uses a fake address. Hope you did not get these from him/her! Otherwise, I'd ask for a refund. Hope you can get one!

Mika

There are spade coins here in Korea too and I am afraid to buy them from any of the sellers here except for one and he doesn't have any. It sucks you got fake ones, but collecting is a journey full of learning!

Keep at it and

Hi Mika

I have not mentioned this seller's name here, but maybe he is already known by judging from your description.

I am not able to contact you as a newcomer the forum "rules" do not for allow for it ( one mod even edited the link I gave you which curiously was from this same website here, that's ridiculous). But if you have an e-mail address It would be good. My e-mail address is: (edited again by mods, but you got it and that is good, will answer tomorrow).

At last, in my last message I just called the second coin Huo Bu ( I obviously know it is not) only to make my message more understandable. Numismatics is part of my profession, but still have not focused more on Chinese coinage studies. Moreover, I knew this could be a Zhou period one, but as I was suspicious and could not find it in my catalogues, I raised the question on this forum.

Nonetheless, I am still willing to buy some real pieces for my museum. Was already a bit disappointed as I opened the parcels, but to be honest, before that I had accepted the fact that they could not be real even when I first bid on them. The price was not so high so I accepted whatever outcome.

GH

I have corrected my message, removing the editing I did not ask for, this is why you cannot see the problem.