Chinese Coins | Chinese And Japanese Cash

the first one is actually a Japanese 1 mon, minted from the 1760 to the late 1860s with no date.

Gnelson87- Rdwarrior is quite right that the first one is Japanese, but I fear that it may be a reproduction. There is just something about it that just does not look quite right.

Thanks for the replies. I would be willing to take your word that they are reproductions, not having any idea myself.

Thai-vic, are these mass reproductions in Asia a recent trend or have they been going on for a long while? The reason I ask is that these coins came out of my great-grandfather's collection (just an old Lucky Strike tin box filled with coins), which probably hasn't been touched in 50 years. It contained a number of coins (all in poor condition) from the early-mid 19th Century and one at least from the late 18th. So if they are reproductions they would likely have to be from the first third of the 20th Century.

You're right that it doesn't matter much to me whether they are genuine or fake. I have no intention of selling them, just putting them back in the tin box.

I'm just happy to be able to identify them now, and that I will no longer mistake Japanese for Chinese. Thanks to all for the info.

I have to say, my instinctive reaction to the bottom one is "fake", simply because there are bucketfuls of fake cash coins around here with that exact same burnt-orange colouration. I think they literally toss them in a fire to make them look like that (some of the ones around here may even have actually been used as "funeral coins"). I see "tourist copy" fake ancient Greek coins from Turkey with the exact same colour.

The first one suffers from the comparison, mainly because of it's almost-exact matching appearance down to the brush-strokes with the second one; if I saw it "by itself", I might not take a second glance at it.


Yeah, that's pretty suspicious. The Qing Dynasty covered a long time (over 250 years) and the coinage naturally changed in size, style and fabric over that period. Older coins are generally larger, for example. They may have gone to lots of trouble to search through millions of coins looking for exact matches in size and colouration, but I doubt anyone would go to all that bother just to sell some cheap souvenirs to tourists.

What's on the backs of them? Are they all the same on the reverse, too?

The first two could well be genuine, while I would expect the last 2 to be fakes. They are not the regular "fakes" which were machine struck, anyways. The mints on the last 2 are Fukien(L)_and Yunnan(R). It is unusual to have the exact same obverse strokes on 2 different provincial coins, and the Yunnan ones tend to be more crude, so this one is almost too good.

As I said in my first post, Qian Long cash coins are extremely common - they're probably among the most common coin types in history. Book value for most mintmarks is just a few cents, but around here you can find genuine examples and fakes tossed together into a coin dealer's "Chinese Cash coins - $2 each" tray.