China coin Hu-Peh

Rick03

Hi guys, I'm new at this group and the reason I join is because of a coin I got that i can't find ANY data. Its a Chinese coin from 1888 HuPeh province 7 mace and 2 candareens.

I've been looking into this finding coins sold anywhere from $100 and $350k. But any of those coins were not exactly that the one I have.

Maybe someone can take a look at it and please provide any idea of the history of the coin or at least point me in the right direction.

Please refer to the images below:

Rick03

Most of the coins I found also has the dragon and the "hupeh province" on it but the other face only has 6 symbols and not 7 like mine at the bottom or has a different province name.

Insider2

Your coin does not look genuine.

Insider2

PS I don't like its surface. Check the Internet as there are several Chinese counterfeits with their obverse and reverse combination not as they should be. I have not check this but apparently you have.

Namvet69

Care to say how you acquired this item? There might be clues in that. Also if you can remove it from the flip for better images, that would be good. Peace Roy

TurboSnail

I agree with insider2. In fact, I don't even believe it was made of silver.

Sapyx

Sorry, but your coin is definitely fake. The province named on the English-language side is Hupeh, but the province named on the Chinese-language side is SInkiang. Which is extra-odd, since SInkiang Province did not issue Imperial Dragon-style dollars.

Check and see if it sticks to a magnet. Usually, the ones with mis-matched sides ("mules") are the cheaper kind, intended to fool tourists who can't read Chinese, and the cheap ones are made of steel, more often than not.

TurboSnail

@Sapyx said:
Sorry, but your coin is definitely fake. The province named on the English-language side is Hupeh, but the province named on the Chinese-language side is SInkiang. Which is extra-odd, since SInkiang Province did not issue Imperial Dragon-style dollars.

You're correct about Hupeh in English and Sinkiang in Chinese. However Slinkiang did minted some coins with SUNGAREl in English as province.

EVillageProwler

All this old-style Anglicization of Chinese place names is hurting my eyes. They have no significant similarity to how they are actually pronounced in any version of Mandarin known to scholars.

As a favor to Chinese everywhere, if the context does not reasonably allow you not to use this form of Anglicization, please at least use quotes: "Hupeh" and "Sinkiang". At least this suggests that you know it is not the actual, correct Pinyin form of Chinese words.

EVP

Insider2

@EVillageProwler said:
All this old-style Anglicization of Chinese place names is hurting my eyes. They have no significant similarity to how they are actually pronounced in any version of Mandarin known to scholars.

As a favor to Chinese everywhere, if the context does not reasonably allow you not to use this form of Anglicization, please at least use quotes: "Hupeh" and "Sinkiang". At least this suggests that you know it is not the actual, correct Pinyin form of Chinese words.

EVP

Something posted in this thread is hurting my eyes too! Note to poster: Thanks for taking the time to alert us to the feelings of the Chinese people. As my principal connection to them involves their "fast food" I won't have a chance to do as you suggest or be concerned with feelings about their language which must be certainly justified.

TurboSnail

@EVillageProwler said:
All this old-style Anglicization of Chinese place names is hurting my eyes. They have no significant similarity to how they are actually pronounced in any version of Mandarin known to scholars.

As a favor to Chinese everywhere, if the context does not reasonably allow you not to use this form of Anglicization, please at least use quotes: "Hupeh" and "Sinkiang". At least this suggests that you know it is not the actual, correct Pinyin form of Chinese words.

EVP

Let's see. The spelling of my surname in traditional Chinese 許 are Hsu or Sheu , Simplified Chinese 许 is Xu, pinyin in Hong Kong is Heoi or Hui. Chinese descendants in Korea is Heo and Chinese descendants in Vietnam is Hái. But guess what? There is only one correct pinyin using google. hsu will 100% guarantee shows up as 許 instead of random Chinese characters with same pronunciation. But there is less than 1% of total Chinese population using it.

Sapyx

@EVillageProwler said:
All this old-style Anglicization of Chinese place names is hurting my eyes. They have no significant similarity to how they are actually pronounced in any version of Mandarin known to scholars.

As a favor to Chinese everywhere, if the context does not reasonably allow you not to use this form of Anglicization, please at least use quotes: "Hupeh" and "Sinkiang". At least this suggests that you know it is not the actual, correct Pinyin form of Chinese words.

EVP

Sorry about that. I'm aware of the various Anglicizations of written Chinese, and on a coin forum such as this, I usually use "whatever the catalogues say" as the default, to make it easier for folks to follow the references in the catalogues. And the Krause catalogues (which most casual collectors of Chinese coins are going to be using) still use Wade-Giles throughout the China section and for Chinese province names.

@TurboSnail said:
You're correct about Hupeh in English and Sinkiang in Chinese. However Slinkiang did minted some coins with SUNGAREl in English as province.

It's my understanding that "Sungarei" is actually a Germanization of "Dzungaria", rather than an Anglicization; the genuine Sungarei coins are patterns, minted by a private mint in Germany on speculation in an effort to win mint contracts from the Chinese government; only a few were minted and, since no contracts were never awarded, none of the Sungarei coins ever actually made it to China.

EVillageProwler

Ok, I’ll bite: what the heck is “Sungarei”? Is that supposed to be a Westernized form of China (i.e., Chung-kuo)?

Blackhawk

Because of the rough surfaces, the coin looks like a cast copy to me. Of course, those pebbled looking surfaces don’t always indicate a fake, as the coin could have suffered surface damage from storage in a harsh environment or a poor cleaning job. Weigh th coin, and also see if you can determine what it’s made of.

On a similar note, and probably one that some people really don’t want to address...How long until someone uses available technology to copy a rare coin in exact detail. I would think that using state of the art lasers, etc., they should even be able to duplicate the flow lines and lustre imparted during the minting process.

Sapyx

@EVillageProwler said:
Ok, I’ll bite: what the heck is “Sungarei”? Is that supposed to be a Westernized form of China (i.e., Chung-kuo)?

As I said, "Sungarei" is the Germanized form of "Dzungaria", the Latinized name given to the northern half of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) province. Wikipedia states that this name in turn derives from the Mongolian name for the region, "Juun Gar", and was the name used by the local khanate for themselves prior to Chinese conquest in the 1750s. By the late 1900s, the name had essentially become obsolete; its use by the German mint probably demonstrates a lack of knowledge of Chinese current affairs on their part; which may also go partway to explaining why they didn't win the contract.

(If you look at one of the maps on that Wikipedia page, you'll see it's in German, with the name on that map spelled "Dsungarei".)

TurboSnail

There used to be a kingdom called 準噶爾/Sungarei. However the English Sungarei on Qing dynasty's coins only represented the northern part of Sinkiang/Xinjiang and not the province itself.

This was the map layout back in 1700's. And the large purple region in the center was Sungarei

This link contains the rest of information of the coin in Chinese.
http://www.accacoin.com/article/info/62?rows=5&page=6

JBK

I still say Peking instead of Beijing.

And don't even get me started on Bombay.