Ingot Or What | Japanese "Cho Gin" Ingot

This looks like a Japanese Cho Gin hand hammered coin from the Ansei era (1854-1860) it's listed as C#9c in Krause and is 0.1350 silver. Very nice.

The emphasis is on 'if genuine'.

Apparently, I understand that there are a lot of these on ebay lately that are copies.

So any easy ways on telling if one is fake or not? Also, any good websites talking about it?

That depends on how well made the fakes are. Since it's primarily people in Japan that are interested in collecting these, I would assume all the best websites will be in Japanese. The best English language site I found to discuss the issue is this one, where it mentions that most of the fake cho jin are cast entirely; for genuine ones, the ingot itself was cast, but the markings were hammered or stamped on afterwards. So you'd look for signs of casting inside the countermarks. I can't see the details in the pic clearly enough to form a judgement one way or another.


The answer to your question is, "yes".

In Japan (and neighbouring China) during this time there were no silver or gold "coins" in the usual Western sense of the word. If you wanted to buy something valuable, you either handed over a vast quantity of bronze cash coins, or you "bartered" for it with some of these more conveniently-sized gold or silver ingots. The main difference between the Japanese and Chinese systems is that in Japan, there was some form of government control over the issue of the ingots; in China silver ingots (known as "sycee") were entirely private issues, made by the merchants themselves.

Because of this government involvement in their manufacture, these Japanese ingots (and the other kinds of "pre-coinage" ingot issued in Japan) are considered sufficiently "coin-like" to be listed in the Krause coin catalogues; Chinese sycee are not.

Here is a back picture of the ingot Thanks
Image: PB010007.jpg
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Looking at the reverse I still beleive it's the real thing.