Cash Has Many Sizes

harasha

I've been prepping my recent purchases at the NYINC (and around that time) and I am about ready to start posting. It is too late for much, but how about three cash pieces of the Northern Song dynasty. I have left the photos unedited to show the different sizes.



The first coin, an AE Cash, was cast during the Xuan He reign of Emperor Hui Zong. Additionally, because of the sharpness of its features, it may likely have been a master coin, or "mother coin" which was used to create the molds for subsequent castings.

The two larger coins are a two and three cash pieces, from the Da Guan reign of Emperor Hui Zong.

RobP

If the red seen on the one on the left is wax rather than deposit it will in all probably have been illustrated somewhere in the first half of the last century.

harasha

Not too sure what you mean by "illustrated." I have inserted a larger image below. By the way, the diameters of the coins are about 25mm, 29mm and 33.5mm respectively.

RobP

It doesn't look like wax which is usually lumps without structure. In the first half of the last century coins were illustrated in sales catalogues by initially taking a wax impression and converting that to a plaster cast. Sometimes traces of wax adhered to the surface of the coin leaving red blobs such as shown below. This may possibly allow you to determine the provenance (and potentially disprove a provenance) because the wax missing from the impression and now resident on the coin may be visible in the catalogue image as an area of relief.



In this case the quantity of wax on the reverse is too small to show up in the catalogue, but you know that it has been in on old illustrated collection. In this case it was Murdoch (II) lot 237 from June 1903.

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RobP

Forget the pictures. I can't get it to work.

harasha

Very interesting!