Chinese Cash Coin ID Help... - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 7 / Views: 1,446
Jay1234 Valued Member United States 379 Posts	Posted 06/02/2018 12:06 pm I'm trying to attribute the 4 coins below. I'm pretty sure that they are not listed in the standard catalog of world coins between 1600-present (not 100% sure). Each coin has a blank reverse. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks! Report this Post to the Staff

Sap Moderator Australia 16829 Posts	Posted 06/04/2018 01:09 am And the reason you won't find them in the Krause catalogues is they predate the Krauses, by quite a long way. They are Song Dynasty coins (circa 960-1279 AD). If no-one else has IDed them by the time I get home from work, I'll look them up. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
Jay1234 Valued Member United States 379 Posts	Posted 06/04/2018 07:08 am Any help is appreciated! Report this Post to the Staff
Finn235 Pillar of the Community United States 6130 Posts	Posted 06/04/2018 07:50 am All the coins should be on here: http://www.calgarycoin.com/referenc...north%20sung Unlike most other cash coins (read top-bottom-right-left) Song coins are often (not always) read clockwise. Most of your coins are [Reign title] Yuan Bao, meaning "Heavy Coin" e.g. not iron. Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16829 Posts	Posted 06/05/2018 10:30 am OK, sorry for the delay. Your coins are: #1: Xiang Fu yuan bao, fourth reign-name of emperor Zhen Zong, used AD 1008-1017. #2: Sheng Song yuan bao, "running script" variety. "Sheng Song" was a substitute reign-title for the "Jian Zhong Jing Guo" era of emperor Hui Zong, corresponding to AD 1101-1102. Hui Zong fancied himself an artist and calligrapher; his coins show a bewildering array of varieties and styles, of which "running script" is one of the more common, though harder to read. #3: Shao Sheng yuan bao, "running script" variety. Second reign-name of emperor Zhe Zong, used AD 1094-1098. #4: Jing You yuan bao, "regular script" variety. Third reign-name of emperor Ren Zong, used AD 1034-1038. All of these coins are fairly cheap and common, worth only a few dollars when fully identified. The reason that these thousand-year-old Chinese coins are so cheap comes down to sheer numbers made. Mintage records for some years of the Song Dynasty survive, and record three million strings of coins cast each year. A "string" is 1000 coins, so that's 3 billion coins. Per year. So even the relatively brief eras, such as Sheng Song, have many survivors down to the present day. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
Jay1234 Valued Member United States 379 Posts	Posted 06/05/2018 11:32 am Thank you very much! It's amazing that they produced so many coins! What catalog/source did you use to look them up? Report this Post to the Staff
Lucky Cuss Pillar of the Community United States 4883 Posts	Posted 06/05/2018 1:03 pm Quote: Mintage records for some years of the Song Dynasty survive, and record three million strings of coins cast each year. A "string" is 1000 coins, so that's 3 billion coins. Per year. I've always wondered how such enormous quantities were churned out, especially since the process was casting and not a modern high speed press. Take that number of 3 billion per year. If the mints were running with no down time 24 hours per day, 265 days per year, the math works out to a rate of about 5,700 coins made per minute, or almost 100 per second. Colligo ergo sum Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16829 Posts	Posted 06/05/2018 6:32 pm Quote: Thank you very much! It's amazing that they produced so many coins! What catalog/source did you use to look them up? The two reference books I have for Chinese coins are the Jen catalogue, put out by Krause Publications, and "Cast Chinese coins" by Hartill. Hartill is the better book, more comprehensive and accurate; Jen is cheaper and includes a price guide, but is unfortunately full of errors that could easily trip up someone new to the series. I use Jen as an initial lookup (as I did for your coins) because of it's handy list of all the Chinese emperors in the Index. Quote: I've always wondered how such enormous quantities were churned out, especially since the process was casting and not a modern high speed press. Take that number of 3 billion per year. If the mints were running with no down time 24 hours per day, 265 days per year, the math works out to a rate of about 5,700 coins made per minute, or almost 100 per second. The answer is the same as "how did the Egyptians build the Pyramids" or "how did the Chinese build the Great Wall": with an awful lot of manpower. I'm not sure we know very much about the organization of the Song Dynasty mint, but we do know a bit more about the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty mints, which are reported to have reached similar mintages. Under the Qing, two government departments in the capital city had the authority to issue coinage: the Board of Works, and the Board of Revenue. I recall reading that the Board of Revenue had six "furnaces", essentially large mint complexes where thousands of workers would work, indeed around the clock, making coins. The Board of Works had four furnaces. That's ten mints, just in the capital; each of the twenty or so provinces also had mints of their own. I believe under the Song, most of the minting taking place outside of the capital took place in the mining regions of Sichuan province, which was at the time on China's western frontier. I suppose it's also entirely possible that the bureaucrats lied about how many coins they were making, puffing up the official estimates. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
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