Chinese Coins - All common?

Windycity

I know nothing of Chinese coins or even how to go about identifying them by date or denomination. Here's a picture of a few from the box of foreign I have... anything of importance or mostly novelty pieces?

MrBreeze

The one in the center left position is from Egypt. The pieces to the left and above the Egyptian piece are machine made cash pieces. The rest are cast Qing Dynasty pieces dating in the 1700s and 1800s. The four character side is the obverse while the two character side is the reverse (w/ the "mintmark"). I haven't looked up the coins, but I believe all are common.

santelia

santelia

You have a bunch of Qing dynasty coins, but several different reign titles and mintmarks. My junkbox finds sucked me into Chinese cash. Half the fun starting out is to decipher the calligraphy. David Harthill's book is the latest, and best reference in English, but it is new and independently published, so I suspect few libraries have it. I puzzled through the Krause "World Coins" starting out with these later coins. PM me if you get too frustrated.
At first glance all of these coins are extremely common. So look at them for educational value, not $$.

Windycity

Thanks! Appreciate the help.

LochNESS

<< <i>I puzzled through the Krause "World Coins" starting out with these later coins. PM me if you get too frustrated. >>


That's what happened to me when I began collecting. Got some cash from an uncle and got so frustrated trying to look up these low-value coins that I just stuck them in some flips and moved on. They've been there for many years.

santelia

So here's a quick lesson; the obverse has the four characters. If you look at the characters to the right and left, they are the same on most of these later coins; "tong bao" = loosely translated (going from memory here) heavenly treasure. The top and bottom characters are the emperor's reign title. Imagine if Obama was president for twenty years (Please- this is non-political, believe me); he might choose a name for his first term, and this would be inscribed on the coin. So Chinese emperors would select a title that would depict a period of time that they ruled. Some would do this to honor their elders, others would do this to evoke a past time of Chinese history.

For example, the one in the middle; I always think "theta zeta" for the greek characters, the second half of the character looks like a Z; reading top, down, left, right is Qian Long tong bao, the reign title of Emperor Gao Zong (1736-95); who kept the same reign title until he abdicated the throne in respect to his grandfather, whom he did not want to rule longer than.

The reverse has a mintmark, the same mintmark, in two languages; in Chinese (right) and Manchu (left); after the Manchurian tribes established control over northern China. The Board of Revenue and Board of Works mintmarks are the most common. When I started out, I would simply cherry-pick anything besides these two mints.

If you buy a book, buy David Harthill's Cast Chinese Coins first; not David Jen's book. Otherwise try this : http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/china/china8.htm#images of titles

sumnom

"Tong bao" 通寶 means "currency." "Tong" 通 means "to circulate, to move through" while "bao" 寶 means "treasure" or "value." Guangxu 光緖 is the reign period from 1875 to 1908. So "Guangxu tongbao" 光緖通寶 would mean "currency of the Guangxu Period." Before the Ming (1368-1644) a single emperor could have multiple reign periods but from the Ming onward, it was one reign period per emperor (at least in China. Korea, Vietnam, and Japan are slightly different.) Keep in mind too that in the phrase "Guangxu Emperor," Guangxu is the name of the period, not the emperor himself. "Guangxu Emperor" refers to the emperor who was on the throne during the Guangxu period. In Japan, it is a little different. The emperor will take the name of the reign period posthumously. I don't know when that practice started.

Reign periods did sometimes refer to past eras but usually they were selected to strike the tone of the the current reign rather than harken back to the past. In pre-Ming times, emperors might select a new reign period to coincide with a new policy, campaign, or reform program of some sort. In these cases the period could be as short as a year or two. You find examples of this during the Cong period in particular.

Santelia, thank you for the link.