LM here is the other side of the Chinese Cash coin.

loditom

This is the best I can get for clean up on it.Hope you can see it fine.



HH,Tom

DesertRat

Loditom,

check out this thread in the world coin forum. Scroll down into the thread to see my pics. you might be able to identify it there if that is what you are trying to do.


Edited to add the website I used to ID mine..

I had forgotten the website but some of the examples I used to id mine were hot-linked.

loditom

Thank's for that link Desert Rat.I will be pulling out a few of my coin's to see if I can find them and date them too.HH,Tom

lordmarcovan

Hm. That's gonna be a tough one. I can't see the characters too well, or even tell up from down.

Here's the image, cropped a bit, and hopefully rotated so it's right-side up. Gonna have to scratch my head a bit on that one.



BTW, a Dr. S. Lee just emailed me about the "Oriental Whatzit" I posted recently. Maybe I will send him a link to this coin, too. If I can't attribute it. I'm sure that between me and my Krause book, and the Darksiders over on the World Coin Forum, somebody will be able to.

lordmarcovan

Hm. It doesn't appear to be from the reign of Kao Tsung (1736-1795), as I had thought it might be. If I'm right, it's older.

It looks like that might be from the reign of the emperor Sheng Tsu (1662-1722). The characters might read "K'ang Hsi T'ung-pao". (K'ang Hsi being the title of that emperor's reign).

I'm far from certain, though. I just can't make the inscription out that well, and I am far, far from an expert on these, anyway. I base my assumption on the bottom character.

What's interesting to me about these Chinese coins that y'all find on the West Coast is that I don't know what the Chinese might have brought with them to America. Since these cash coins had the same basic shape for over a thousand years, it is entirely possible that really old ones were circulating in China and came to America with immigrants. There weren't likely to have been many collectors who saved them in China back then, so there is no telling how long they were hoarded and spent, sewn on clothing as buttons, carried to America, etc, etc.

Here on the East Coast we have a much better chance than y'all do of finding colonial coins, of course- it's one of our advantages. However, y'all have a better chance for gold coins, silver dollars, and possibly can find much older coins than even our colonial finds, if some ancient Chinese pieces turn up in your digs. It's entirely possible. Ancient coins in the New World? Who'd have thought it? Cool!

Yours probably isn't ancient, but it predates any American coins you'll find, of course. It's pretty old!