Possible Qing dynasty copper cash, unidentified type
NumisLearner
Posts: 7 ✭
Hi,
My friend gifted me a stash of a couple dozen assorted coins. Most are from recent decades and easy to identify, like the United States, Canada, Eurozone, some former Eastern Bloc countries, and Thailand.
In the mix, there were three identical coins that are a bit harder to identify. Photos of obverse and reverse attached.
Some traits include:
- Relatively large (U.S. quarter included for size comparison)
- Copper colored
- Square hole in the center
- Obverse appears to have Chinese writing
- Reverse appears to have Manchu writing, suggesting this is from the Qing dynasty
- Reverse has raised patches between the Manchu characters, which at first glance seem like alterations, but are identical on all three coins
I do not speak Chinese or Manchu, but I have a hunch these are the languages used.
A few years back, my uncle gave me what I identified as a brass cash coin from the Qianlong Emperor (18th century AD). That coin is smaller and a different color, but also has Chinese on the obverse, Manchu on the reverse, and a square hole in the center.
I suspect these new coins are some form of copper cash from the Qing dynasty, but other than that one coin from my uncle I have no expertise with imperial Chinese coinage.
Since I don't speak Chinese, there is an off chance these are not coins at all. A few months back this same friend gifted me as part of a coin stash what I thought might be an imperial cash coin, but it turned out to be a good luck charm sold on Amazon for dirt cheap. However, I have a good feeling about these coins, since they are larger and have the Manchu writing.
Please help me identify these coins.
Comments
The three coins depicted in this thread are all modern machine-struck imitations of Chinese cash coins of the Qianlong emperor.
Feng Shui practitioners believe that cash coins, particularly sets depicting the names of the 12 Qing emperors, have fortuitous mystical properties when tied together using red string. They also believe that using actual genuine coins to make these "coin charms" might be less fortuitous or even bad luck, since the coins might have picked up evil spirits over the centuries since they were made, so it's safer to use modern replicas. Apparently the spirits can't tell the difference.
This is why, even though the genuine coins of this type are super-common and only worth a dollar or two each, replicas of them abound.
Your other coin, the one that is "smaller and a different color", might be genuine; we'd have to see pictures of that one.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
How can you tell they are modern machine-struck imitations?
As I mentioned, they were part of a stash of coins from assorted countries (mainly minted within living memory for the older generation alive today) given to me by a non-collecting family. Perhaps this context argues against their authenticity.
If they are indeed fakes or replicas, I will remove them from my coin collection and tuck them in a drawer somewhere.
Here is the other coin I was describing. The context is very different here.
This coin is part of a family heirloom that my uncle gave me in 2017. My uncle's gift consisted of two laminated sheets he made with my great-grandpa. The sheets contain 47 foreign coins in total, which I inventoried in 2023. My uncle wrote that most coins come from trips my great-grandparents took together, although some my great-grandpa bought or traded for. My great-grandpa helped my uncle identify and organize these coins for a school project around 1967, perhaps for a 4th grade social studies project. He is reasonably confident with the date, less so with the context of the project.
I do not speak Chinese or Manchu, but I played "spot the difference" with the characters on my coin against online reference materials (a Chinese-speaking friend double-checked my work for the Chinese portion, but not the Manchu portion). I believe the coin pictured is: 1735-1796 (Qianlong Emperor). 1 cash Qianlong Tongbao. Boo Yuwan mint mark (Peking, Qing dynasty). Based on color, this is the original brass version and not the posthumous red copper version. Demonetized.
The plastic laminate my relatives used in 1967 is visible in the photo, since I have not altered the laminated sheets in any way, I merely inventoried them.
This is by far the oldest coin in the two laminated sheets. Based on my 2023 inventory, the remaining 46 coins date to 1877-1965.
Yes, that one looks genuine, and is more or less correctly described.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.