Sycee boats, saddles RFI

mhammerman

Greetings forumites. I'm requesting information from our collective understanding, of Sycees. Particularly, silver Sycee at .72, 1, 5, 10, 50 tael. I know it's darkside stuff but they are made of SILVER. In fact, they are made of ancient silver and used from 1644 to 1911 by a couple of different dynasties. I know there are gold and lead ones but I'm looking for information on the silver ones. The boats and saddles seem to be pretty cool but there are a number of types that are very cool.

I've looked on heritage and they have had a few pass through their hands and the prices are all over the place. Openly advertised on the auction descriptions as forged seals but authentic sycees from the period, I have yet to see one with an original seal described. I know there are a lot of counterfeits and I understand that counterfeits and forged seals are completely different topics. So, now I'm interested. Actually I saw one in a dealers case at a show, a 50 taeler (66.67 oz) and I passed on the $300 tag in 2005; never seen another one. Man...reminds me of the chopped trade dollars I used to have...man.

Knowing that we have a number of world and particularly China travelers in our PM group, is there someone that can nudge me in the right direction to find out more of the bullion history, books of seals, availability of sycees...maybe a book or a website that works the topic pretty well?

Thanks in advance for any reply.

mkman123

I will look into this for you and see if there are chinese sites about these items...........only thing is, some distrust these as the counterfeits have made them afraid.....

Pokermandude

I've followed these a bit, but I really don't know much about them. There are a lot of fakes of the sycees on Ebay, but they tend to be fairly obvious.

I only have one, a small (<1 oz) and more modern "gift/good luck" sycee which I picked up by chance at a show a couple years ago.

ricko

Those are interesting....had never heard of these.... I would like to get a couple.... will look for them. Cheers, RickO

mhammerman

Sycee book that is out of print but apparently the go-to resource in English

A little further down in the article are some links to photos and descriptions in the book.

Weiss

I think they're really cool. But the market seems to be absolutely flooded with fakes. And their form and construction seems to lend itself to counterfeits.

Knowing how many/good the fakes are would completely ruin it for me. Pass, with a sad face.