What Is Chopped?

There are chop marks on the obverse, reverse, or both. Trade dollars that were circulated in the Orient were frequently chopped by merchants with their own "chop devices".

You might find this helpful.

http://www.funtopics.com/fun_topics...gliotta.html

some people try to complete a set of chopped Trade dollars because different chop marks means different things. I dont understand it myself but there are collectors that do collect them, and they must be "market acceptable" because even PCGS will slab a chopped Trade dollar and they only slab market acceptable coins. As far as price wise it does effect the value but sure doesn't ruin it like you would think, there are some chopped dollars still changing hands in the hundreds of dollars which isn't much less than one unchopped in the same grade would bring. Then you have the scarce chopps (I dont know what they are but maybe someone else does) and people pay a premium from a coin without a chop that carries these rarer chops on them. So I guess if I had to put it in perspective, it would be like a VAM collector, they will pay a premium for certian VAM's (some people see them as less than perfect) and some VAM's (like some chopped marks) are common and not worth a premium at all

nope, the forgers also add chop marks because people used to think that if it had chop marks it was original so they realized it was easier to pass one off as original with them so they started adding them themself. If you know your chop marks and what they mean you can tell the difference (I cant because I do not know the meanings and what they look like) but they just put anything they think that looks like a chop mark just to pass it off as original and their marks really mean nothing

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Originally posted by 50cents

Here is another great site with lot of information.
http://www.tradedollarnut.com/

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A simply amazing collection.