Not sure how many of you can differential among Chinese official assay marks, chop marks and counter stamps.
To me, counter stamps were the manufacture marks to guarantee silver/gold quality. The earliest Chinese counter stamps that I own was on 11th century gold bar. Most of these gold bars and silver bars hid under river for over 900 years. I truly had no idea anyone can fake them. If you have any chance to examine one, you will know what I am talking about.
Between 1840 and 1870, many military rations carried official assay marks and these has been in-depth studied. At the time, Chinese are using silver tael. These round rations were the military payment to soldiers. In case they got killed and/or lost the rations, rebel cannot use them. How to authenticate these chop marks is an art. All I can tell you is that there is only one assay chop per a type of ration and the angel to put the chop in is a fix. In other words, do not think the hammer can hit the mark vertically to form the assay mark.
The last one is chop marks for private "bank"??? (Financial firms) to put a symbol to guarantee that they would take the coins back provided that they were the last guy to guarantee the silver weight and quality. These chop marks could be a Chinese character or could be a symbol, e.g., a small circle. These chop marks were oftenly seen on trade dollars and 8 reals. How to authenticate them that they were indeed got put onto a coin 100+ years ago ..... I doubt anyone can.
Just remember, different area in China put different types of marks on coins. Usually, the northern China and a few coast cities used Chinese characters as marks, and center China used symbols as marks.
One more thing. Have you ever seen a coin that is 100% covered by chop marks? For unknown reasons, I knew many advanced Chinese coin collectors were looking for these coins. None of them were interested in one chop AU-MS trade dollars. Most to almost all trade dollars/8 reals/Japanese dragon dollars with a chop to a few chops got melted in 1979-1980 because they were considered damage coins and were only worth silver content at the time.
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Not sure how many of you can differential among Chinese official assay marks, chop marks and counter stamps.
To me, counter stamps were the manufacture marks to guarantee silver/gold quality. The earliest Chinese counter stamps that I own was on 11th century gold bar. Most of these gold bars and silver bars hid under river for over 900 years. I truly had no idea anyone can fake them. If you have any chance to examine one, you will know what I am talking about.
Between 1840 and 1870, many military rations carried official assay marks and these has been in-depth studied. At the time, Chinese are using silver tael. These round rations were the military payment to soldiers. In case they got killed and/or lost the rations, rebel cannot use them. How to authenticate these chop marks is an art. All I can tell you is that there is only one assay chop per a type of ration and the angel to put the chop in is a fix. In other words, do not think the hammer can hit the mark vertically to form the assay mark.
The last one is chop marks for private "bank"??? (Financial firms) to put a symbol to guarantee that they would take the coins back provided that they were the last guy to guarantee the silver weight and quality. These chop marks could be a Chinese character or could be a symbol, e.g., a small circle. These chop marks were oftenly seen on trade dollars and 8 reals. How to authenticate them that they were indeed got put onto a coin 100+ years ago ..... I doubt anyone can.
Just remember, different area in China put different types of marks on coins. Usually, the northern China and a few coast cities used Chinese characters as marks, and center China used symbols as marks.
One more thing. Have you ever seen a coin that is 100% covered by chop marks? For unknown reasons, I knew many advanced Chinese coin collectors were looking for these coins. None of them were interested in one chop AU-MS trade dollars. Most to almost all trade dollars/8 reals/Japanese dragon dollars with a chop to a few chops got melted in 1979-1980 because they were considered damage coins and were only worth silver content at the time.
Thx - that's a lot of good information.