Trade Dollar - Can anyone identify this chop mark?

dthigpen

Hi,

Can anyone identify the origin of this Chopmark on this 1874-S Trade Dollar? It is the only chop on the coin.



Cheers,

coynclecter

Those are marks from Anaconda's fangs. He bites each coin he buys for identification.

keoj

Chop identification is extremely esoteric. I wish I could help but do not even know who studies chops.....

keoj

sumnom

It appears to be the Chinese number "two." Beyond that I do not know. Are you sure it is a chop? The reason I ask is that there is different, more complex form of the character for two that is/was used in accounting and official business that was more compex to discourage tampering with account books. The two strokes of the character for "two" are too easy to alter or forge.

EVillageProwler

Doesn't Shiroh know a great deal about individual chops? BTW, I am unconvinced that that is a chopmark. (It does resemble a Chinese numeral 2 though, but it could be just about anything.)

EVP

sumnom

You might want to try posting this over on the Darkside as well. We get into this sort of thing over there.

dthigpen

Bad lighting on the picture that I took, it seems to hide the equal-depth indent that connects the two lines by the 4 that makes it look similar to a "C". Here is a picture that shows the chop outline a bit better.