Question on chopmarked trade dollars

mbbiker · March 22, 2003 12:47PM

I'm interested in starting a set of chopmarked trade dollars. Do chopmarks lower the price, if so how much? Also is there a limit to how many chopmarks a TD can have before its considered "uncollectable"?

P.S.

wingedliberty · March 22, 2003 12:51PM

Actually sometimes they add a premium, as advanced trade dollar collectors look to build sets with
certain Chinese characters representing specific merchants.

Brian.

mbbiker · March 22, 2003 12:53PM

raise the value, do you have any pictures or a list of what dates/ chops add a prem? All the dealers around here treat chopmarks as major damage.

BillJones · March 22, 2003 12:55PM

I don't think that any chop-marked Trade Dollar is uncollectable. So far as the chop marks go, if there are more than one or two in obvious places, the price will go down. If the piece is covered with them, the price can go way down although I have seen them "catch fire" at an auction and sell for higher than predicted prices. Most of the time you can buy common date, heavily chopped Trade Dollars for less than $75 (some times at lot less) regardless of the sharpness grade.

I've seen a couple of Mint State pieces with chop marks. One had a mark that was well hidden, and it had only a minor affect on the price. If the marks of obvious, however, the price and marketability go way down.

Buy chop marked trade dollars for the love of them, NOT as any kind of investment or store of value.

Tootawl · March 22, 2003 1:03PM

Hopefully TradeDollarNut will see this. If not, PM him. He has helped me a time or two about trade dollars. He's a first class guy.

clw54 · March 22, 2003 1:04PM

Contact shirohniichan. He knows a lot about chopmarked trade dollars.

EVillageProwler · March 22, 2003 1:05PM

Shiroh is also extremely knowledgeable about chopped TD's.

EVP

tradedollarnut · March 23, 2003 1:12AM

I love collecting chopmarked trade dollars - quite a challenge to find them in high grades! Some dates are even scarcer with chops than without. I still cannot find an 1875 chop!

ebay is a decent place to find chopped dollars - but as usual you must beware. I've seen some chopped coins that I felt were not genuine. For instance, there are three 1873 chops on ebay right now and a couple of them have very unusual reeding.

tradedollarnut · March 23, 2003 1:18AM

Here is one of the 1873 chops - note the incomplete reeding:

ebay trade dollar

Question on chopmarked trade dollars

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