The article is quite brief unfortunately. Saw a reference to this in Archaeology Magazine. Look closely, you can see that some of the original fiber strings appear remarkably be intact : http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803270001.html
So what does the Chinese government do with all that hoard since they prohibited export of their coins? If I remember correctly, only a few years ago they found a 10 ton hoard. Literally an entire room packed with ancient cash coins, and it seems like every single year they find another hoard of tens or hundreds of thousands of coins. They must be sitting on 100+ tons of ancient cash by now. I hope they are not melting them to make toys for American children, or bolts for construction.
Wondering about they buying power of that cash at the time when the jar was lost... Sallent, the hoard was found in Japan. I hope the Chinese gov won't do anything with it.
The part I found interesting was the pot contained an 'invoice'. "A "mokkan" wooden tablet, less than 1 millimeter thick, was discovered at the edge of the lid, and “nihyaku rokuju” (260) had been written on it with an ink brush. If the words “represent two hundred and sixty ‘kan’ (1,000 coins), the coins could total 260,000,” said an official." Now I want to see a careful count of the contents and see how far from the stated number are found.
Last year a hoard of 300,000 Song dynasty coins were discovered in China http://www.numismaticnews.net/article/chinese-coin-hoard-weighs-tons According to Peter Tompa "China has a billion-dollar annual internal market in art of all periods" including "common antiquities like pottery and coins". No word on last year's large Song hoard being sold yet.
View this excellent paper here. There are others: There was another article that suggested that this was a ritual deposit. As such I would imagine the count would be fairly accurate. One would be likely to cheat another, but less so the Gods.
Yes, found in Japan, but Chinese coins. The vast majority of ancient Asia used Chinese coins, not domestic.
