Chinese With Square Hole | Kwangtung Struck Cash Coin

This coin is a milled (mostly they are cast) cash from the Kwantung province in name of emperor Kuang Hsu. it was struck at Canton. It shows no date, but has been struck between 1890 and 1908.
It is in Krause as China/Kwangtung Province 1 cash KM#190

It certainly does have "Mongolian" (rather, a variant known as Manchu script), and it does indeed indicate the coins are "recent", relatively speaking.

"Cash-style" coins, with the square hole, have been around in China for over 2000 years. The Qing dynasty, the last Imperial dynasty, was of Manchu origin. It's founder was Nurhachi, who is credited with inventing the Manchu alphabet and founding the Later Jin dynasty by reunifying the warring Manchu tribes into a single state. They conquered China in 1644.

If you see a coin with Manchu script on it, you know it has to date from after 1616, and most likely dates from between 1662 and 1911.

gxseries- I can sort of see what you mean, but the real ones were machine-struck and had many die variants. But ultimately these coins are so common and cheap that it really doesn't seem like it would be cost-efficient to counterfeit.

gxseries- well I suppose that this is true. I have a relative living in China now, and he says that anything and everything is counterfeited over there (From Coins to toothpaste). Though this coin is worth about 10 cents in this condition, I know that tourist copies are made and sold to unsuspecting laypersons for much more than 10 cents. But all in all, this one still looks ok to me.

Sap- thanks for clearing stuff up. I knew that I wasn't crazy for thinking this was a legit, though cheaply-made cash coin.

This coin was struck from 1890-1895 with a nominal weight of 8 fen - over 2.8 grams and from 1895-1899 with a nominal weight of 7 fen - under 2.8 grams.

I wouldn't conclude that. If it's less worn, it's simply been well-preserved. You can readily find examples of this coin in mint-fresh uncirculated state.


Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. A professional authenticator like a TPG would charge $40 or so to give an opinion on a coin worth less than a dollar. Your coin shows all the signs of being genuine, and for these coins there really would be no difference in price between a well-made fake and a genuine item - not that I've ever heard of anyone going to the trouble of making "well-made fakes" of these.

Here's my example of KM/Y# 190. It came from a bulk lot of "3 for $1" coins I bought some 10 years ago. For this particular coin, 33¢ was a bit of a ripoff - the CV at he time was 10¢ or so.



The coin is a little bent, just like most examples of this coin I've seen (including yours) are. The metal is so thin, the machine they used to punch out the square holes was apparently prone to causing the coins to warp and bend. There's also some kind of lamination or planchet flaw on the lower right side of the reverse; I can see a similar kind of flaw on your coin, on the upper left side of the obverse. As I said, quality control simply wasn't worth them paying much attention to.

This type of copper coin is very cheap in China. Kwangtung (Guangdong) Mint was one of the most prolific issuers of Chinese coins. Below is an abstract on the Kwangtung Mint:

A NUMISMATIC HISTORY OF THE BIRMINGHAM MINT, 1981
Chapter X Minting Equipment
by James O. Sweeny,

" In April 1887 Heatons received an order for a complete mint to be erected at Canton. The size of the mint was enormous. It had a capacity of 2.6 million cash coins per day, simultaneous with 100,000 silver coins per day. It required 90 coining presses to achieve this output, plus thousands of tons of peripheral equipment. It was unquestionably the largest mint - government or private - in the world, both then and for a long time to come. Heatons' contract was for the entire project, including buildings, equipment, start-up, and training. The buildings were designed by Mr. Edwin C. Middleton of Birmingham, and had an overall size of 657 feet by 424 feet. Completion of the plant was required in 18 months, and, in spite of some delays in the construction of the buildings, actual minting operations began in early 1889. some 60 million cash coins were produced in that year.
Follow-on orders continued for many years afterwards. Another 12 coining presses were ordered in 1904, along with a new rolling mill. There were even orders for such diverse items as lawn mowers and a two-wheel hand-drawn fire engine. The original order was probably the largest single order ever placed on a manufacturer of minting equipment; it was certainly Heatons' largest undertaking."