Help with Identifying China Empire coins

jmm2562 · June 1, 2025 7:16AM

I found a box in my collection of ~100 old Chinese coins. I'm just beginning to learn how to properly identify these coins and could use some guidance. Here is a photo of the box, less the dozen I pulled out to pursue identification...

I found an excellent high-level way to explain inscriptions and categorize...

https://www.lincolnmuseum.com/assets/downloads/An_introduction_and_identification_guide_to_Chinese_Qing_dynasty_coins.pdf

Any others out there to go one level deeper perhaps?

jmm2562 · June 1, 2025 7:41AM

Here is my first unresolved mystery. I have 2 coins with the same inscriptions translating to...

1 Cash - Guangxu Tongbao; Boo-guwang

... but have some differences...

1) One is the size of a US Dime and the other the size of a US Quarter
2) One has a round hole and the other a square hole
3) CoinSnap app identifies one from 1906 and the other from 1875 (not found on Numista)

Numista does show two different possible matching coins, same inscriptions but different size, mint years and holes...

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces22475.html (1906-1908)
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces6817.html (1890-1899)

I don't see any mintage for 1875 as reported by CoinSnap. Could CoinSnap be wrong in this case and the above correct?

I think this is going to be the easiest mystery to solve among the many to come as I work through the box.

Sapyx · June 1, 2025 3:50PM

I believe the Numista dates are more likely to be correct. It's my understanding that "1875" is the beginning of the reign of the emperor in question (which is where CoinSnap is getting its date from), while "1890" is the year the Kwangtung mint obtained the western coin-making machinery to machine-strike cash coins. The position and orientation of the centre hole for these machine-struck coins is unimportant.

Some of the coins in your box aren't going to be found on that website you linked to, because they are either not Chinese or not from the Qing Dynasty. For example:

Top row, second from left: that one is Japanese;
Top row second from right, I think that one is Korean;
Second row, left-most pile, the top coin is a Taiping Rebellion coin, which occurred during the Qing Dynasty but the coins aren't usually classified as Qing and aren't mentioned on that website;
The bottom-right coin is much older, a Kai Yuan Tong Bao coin from the Tang Dynasty (AD 621-907);
I suspect the greenish-grey one near the centre with the loop attached to it is Vietnamese.

jmm2562 · June 2, 2025 7:04AM

Thanks @sapyx for the great information! I can definitely see the 1875 claim by CoinSnap to be based on the emperor reign. I agree that Numista is a pretty trustworthy record. It's really rare to find a mistake.

I'm curious about your ability to distinguish between asian country coins. Are there some obvious clues I can learn to help guide my efforts or some docs online that would be helpful to a newbie?

jmm2562 · June 2, 2025 7:15AM

Before I attack the box of asian coins, I'd like to work on the few that I pulled out to pursue first. Here is the half dozen I chose, which are generally larger and some sound like silver...

(I've been trying an image match on some, e.g. the lower right gold colored coin, but to no avail.)

NOTE: I believe the 11 waves design is a good indicator of a Japan coin, see top-right reverse.

Sapyx · June 2, 2025 4:43PM

@jmm2562 said:
I'm curious about your ability to distinguish between asian country coins. Are there some obvious clues I can learn to help guide my efforts or some docs online that would be helpful to a newbie?

Alas, that just comes down to "experience". I have seen (and been caught out by) enough of those Japanese and Korean coins to know that those specific types with those characters are from those countries.

@jmm2562 said:
Before I attack the box of asian coins, I'd like to work on the few that I pulled out to pursue first. Here is the half dozen I chose, which are generally larger and some sound like silver...

(I've been trying an image match on some, e.g. the lower right gold colored coin, but to no avail.)

NOTE: I believe the 11 waves design is a good indicator of a Japan coin, see top-right reverse.

They won't be silver. There are a very, very few known silver cash coins, from China and from Vietnam, but they are all excessively rare. If you're seeing traces of grayish metal, they are much more likely to be iron, or a high-tin brass.

Let's go through these six, then. They are all "not your typical Chinese cash", for various reasons. My numbering is from top left to bottom right.

This one is not actually a coin, but a charm, as is evidenced by the pictorial reverse. Again, a very few Chinese and Vietnamese cash coins have pictorial reverses but they are extremely rare; the vast majority of coin-like objects with pictorial reverses are charms. Some charms have obverse inscriptions copied from genuine coins, some are just Chinese proverbs or blessings. In this case, the inscription is "Zheng De Tong Bao", which is the name of a Ming Dynasty emperor (1505-1521) who did not issue any actual coins. "Zheng de" translates to something like "true morality". Zeno.ru database of charms with this inscription.
This one is Korean. The characters on the reverse give the specific mint (Korea had an awful lot of mints in the 1700s) and sometimes the year or specific furnace number. The obverse reads in Korean as "Sang P'yong T'ong Bo". Here's the zeno.ru index for these coins.
It is indeed Japanese; the wave reverse is quite distinctive of Japan but those four characters on the obverse (read in Japanese as "kan ei tsu ho"), are also highly indicative of Japanese origin, as they were used there for several hundred years. Wikipedia.
Another Korean.
This one looks like a Chinese cash coin, of the Xianfeng emperor, but the corrosion and colour strongly suggest to me that it's actually made of iron. Test it with a weak magnet and see if it sticks. As it turns out, there were some iron cash coins cast during this time period in some of the provincial mints, so I suspect this is one of those. Certainly a less common find than your typical bronze cash of this emperor.
The reason you were struggling to ID this one is it's another charm, and not an actual coin. The lumps of solder on the back tell me that this piece was once fused into or onto a larger object. This one's just a general blessing charm: the obverse (bottom pic) says "fu shou kang ning" - may you have happiness, long life, health and peace; the reverse says "bai zi qian sun" - may you have 100 sons and 1000 grandsons. This example on zeno is basically the same as yours.

Sapyx · June 2, 2025 4:54PM

For a "helpful doc for a newbie", I was going to point you towards this Google Docs document compiled and linked to on zeno.ru... but then I looked at it and it's 175 pages long, so perhaps not exactly a "newbie-friendly" reference.

jmm2562 · June 10, 2025 5:10PM

@sapyx Just to confirm your findings on #6 above, I found a chinese site with a picture of the same charm. It does not react to a magnet so must be nickel, brass or some other non-steel based alloy. I had to translate the mandarin to get the "happiness, long life..." motto. I'll have to work on that 100 sons thing.

jmm2562 · June 10, 2025 5:23PM

@sapyx I believe I have identified #2 above. Korean 5 Mun 1883 Series 6 Value 5... tongwiyong Joseon dynasty...

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces62931.html

So many mint marks, so little time! But I think this is a good first match.

Help with Identifying China Empire coins

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