Numismatic Adventures In Korea

I've got time for the first "observation". Since the US dollar is strong right now relative to the Korean Won (about 900 Won to the dollar on 1-1-08 and about 1400 Won to the dollar on 1-1-09), people in Korea are absolutely crazy for American dollars. I was playing a traditional Korean card game (Go-Stop) and didn't have any small Korean bills to play with, but had some $1 bills. The Korean people REALLY wanted those dollars. I used them with a value of 1500 Won and whenever someone got one, they put it straight into their pocket.

Some places in Asia won't accept the 1996 series $100 bill.

hc8604- why won't they accept it? Because counterfeiters have been able to nearly replicate it?

Really, two dollar bills are said to bring good luck?! In which Asian countries is this said to be the case? Also, how do you think that this superstition began?

Jays, as I am collecting Korean coins, it seems that the Korean collectors versus the general public can be on two extreme ends. The collectors in general usually have a "who cares" altitude versus serious collectors that go for high grade coins which you can see go for mad amount of money on ebay. In particular, if you look at the UNC price of a 1959 10 whan, the early 1966-1970 5 won and 10 won coins, 1972 50 won, 1970 100 won, etc, I have NEVER seen any going any lower than 100USD. There are other coins too but that's just a short list of them.

Perhaps, it may be the ignorant public that's driving prices up as they generally don't stash such high grade coins and hence making UNC coins relatively scarce. From what I can see on ebay, it's usually those overseas travelers that went to Korea in the early days and probably kept a few nice coins from circulation. Now a lot of the buyers are Korean, which makes it pretty interesting to see the flow.

I did remember pulling 1 and 5 won coins in Korea a long time ago but that's probably at least 10+ years ago when I visited.

Jays, I don't have the KM numbers with me but if you are looking for the composition, I have it on my site:

http://www.gxseries.com/numis/korea...e_modern.htm

The new 10 won is pretty interesting as it's copper plated aluminum.

I've got a wonderful receipt from the Lotte Mart in Korea (the Lotte company is HUGE, the Lotte Mart, much like Walmart, is just one arm of the company). My wife and I took my mother-in-law shopping and bought her lots of groceries to make sure she had plenty to eat when we left. I'm not going to go into how much I was unhappy with the 24,000 Won bone from a Korean cow we purchased (the bone was 1380 Won/100 g! Work out that math and tell me that it isn't way too much for a soup bone. Besides, there was a perfectly good bone from an American cow for only 350 Won/100 g). If you don't keep up with the news, Korean people are REALLY mad because the government recently allowed for the importation of American beef. I think most Korean people believe there is a conspiracy by America to send them either really old beef that we don't want, really low quality beef, or beef infected with mad cow disease. I think the honest truth is that the Korean beef industry cannot create a product that comes even close to competing with the American product based on price. A similar thing happened a few years ago in America with the importation of European steel. I digress.

The wonderful thing about this receipt is that it lists prices, some of which are in individual Won. Korea's smallest coin is a 10 Won, so what do they do when prices come to 4567 Won or something? On my receipt most items have an even price (3,980 Won for example), but I've got one product that is 31,875 Won (more beef) and another that is 9,288 Won (rice cake I think). These last two odd prices are possible only because of the fact that the products are sold by weight. The total receipt comes to 160,713 Won. The individual Won were simply added together. Then, since there is no coin less than 10 Won, there is a 3 Won deduction made at the end. On a different receipt I have that ends in an 8, there is an 8 Won deduction. At least at the Lotte Mart, the customer always gets the deduction, but only a single deduction at the end.

I of course write all of this because of the similarity between this and peoples' discussions regarding the elimination of the 1 cent coin. Some people argue that by eliminating the cent the consumer will get shafted considerably, but as this receipt shows, this is not the case. Rounding only occurred at the end, not based on each individual item. In this case, the rounding always favored the customer, but this was the Lotte Mart, who knows what would happen at other places.

I really wasn't trying to justify an American product or be "American". I know that the US Beef and the Korean beef taste a bit different, they eat different grains. Yes, the consumer always has a choice, but it is my opinion that the choice is being made based on irrational fears rather than rational judgment. There are no assurances of safety with any product. Most people really should not be paying three or four times the money to buy Korean beef, they simply do not have the spare money but they spend it anyway. In particular, I was a bit bothered that it was my money that was used to buy a product that I believe is ridiculously overpriced. I'm all for supporting my parents-in-law, but for the amount of money I spent on 5 days worth of beef, they could have gotten 30 days worth.

Okay, I've been busy, but I've been meaning to discuss my only real numismatic purchase in Korea. First off, even if the thing I've got is totally fake, I didn't spend very much for it (20,000 Won, about $16). I found a book in an old market. It is a "World Coin Stock" book (pretty small, about 3 X 5). It has 9 pages with 12 coins on each page (108 coins!). The coins are a very eclectic Asian bunch. Quite a few are the 20 cent value (1 mace and 44 candareens) from various Chinese states. There are at least 10 that are tokens of some sort (on one side they have the twelve animals of the Chinese calendar, on the other they feature one of the animals). There is another neat token, "Memento of the Birth of the Republic of China". However, there are quite a few other things as well, "silver" coins from the Republic of China, smaller "silver" coins from the Chinese provinces, there's even three 10 cent coins from French Indo-China. I know, buying something like this in an Asian market screams out "fake". But there are a few things about this that are really strange. There are also 2 coins from the Republic of China which are made of nickel and have essentially no value. Additionally, in those cases where I have more than one of a particular coin, I studied the wear patterns on them and they are different grades with different patterns of wear. I know that this book has two strikes against it (bought in Asian market), but these other things make me think it might be real. Maybe some of the coins are real and some are fake? The best test of fakery would have been to leave the place I got it from for a while, then go back and see if a new book had come out to take its place. Unfortunately, my brother-i-law's car was parked in a spot that was 1000 won for each 5 minutes. We had to leave. Before I go any deeper into this book and start weighing and taking pictures, what are people's thoughts?