1811 Capped Bust Half Dollar With Chopmark?

Very interesting!

Below is a nice Capped Bust half dollar with chopmarks:

Maybe so, but they still represent numismatic fascination.




Put me amongst the latter. The History of the Chinese and silver and opium is in a large part of it. The story really starts in 1494 when a Spanish-born pope Alexander VI issued a series of Papal Bulls splitting the world in two between Spain and Portugal to exploit by any means necessary in return for spreading Christianity to all parts of the New World. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas was the Bull that sealed and ratified a series of earlier Bulls tho both Empires continued to bicker over the rich's being discovered and exploited.

Asia, and most importantly China/Japan, fell within the Portugal sphere tho this was contested by Spain with the argument being constant. At the heart of the matter was the rich trade monopoly of the China/Japan silk trade, which was extremely lucrative for whomever controlled it. The Chinese hated the Japanese, and visa versa, but they loved the metal Japan was rich in which was silver. The Japanese needed silk, which was highly prized for their kimonos. This silk, in effect, also became a highly prized quasi-currency in Japan, being held in such high esteem and value and so richly patterned by Japanese artisans.

But it was silver that unlocked the first Asian trading lanes by the then Euro-Empires thru a series of yearly "Black Ships" that plied the waters between China and Japan alternately loaded with gold, silver, and silk. This era also saw the rise of the Jesuit order in the Catholic church because they were the first able to learn how to speak the Asian Languages and made themselves invaluable translators, economists, and even confidants of the rulers of both Japan and China.

But at the heart of it all was Japanese silver, which Japan was rich in with the discovery of a very large deposit near the city of "Oda", "which eventually accounted for 1/3'rd of the worlds yearly production". Japns silver was the only currency the Chinese would accept for barter and this was the beginnings of the stories that followed. Including the use of chop marks on coinage.

@Silverskunk .... Good read on the overall history! That said, chopmarks reveal no "down-to-earth" history about their origin. All they do is tell some vague history about trade. The chopmarks fail to tell us who was doing the trading, where he was located, what he was trading, etc. Sure, chopmarked coins do carry a mystery, but I've yet to see one with a mystery that can be solved. Many a counterstamped coin offers that prospect to a collector, and that's the plus-factor that chopmarks lack .... my take.

Are you talking about the OP coin or another mentioned in the thread?