As threatened, I started photographing and checking the Hartill references for my Chinese Cash. While I would be happy to receive corrections to my listed Hartill numbers, I would particularly like a step by stem explanation on where I went wrong in selecting from the several options for what seems to be the same coin. Some of the separations seem to make more sense than others to my mind but I am missing how and why some features of some characters rate a separate number and others do not. I feel more confident of the H16.200 with a separate stroke at the left of Xi but the others are a bit a toss up based on comparing the coins to the Hartill drawings not really knowing which features count. Can someone familiar with the subject talk me through how I should have approached using Hartill or what it is that makes one of these coins different from the others. If anyone has other Xi Ning variations, please post with explanations.
First of all, great to see more interest in ancient Chinese coinage! I struggle a lot with the Hartill variations as well. I've often bought from dealers and disagreed with their Hartill assignments. For example, it's hard for me to tell the difference between the various types of feet of the "tong" and whether characters are "normal" or "large" sized without seeing the actual coins! I've been told that when it comes to wu zhu variations, Hartill actually contains several errors and omissions (not that he claims to be comprehensive). I've also heard from some specialists in Northern Song that Hartill can be lacking. I know that @TuckHard in particular has an interest in Northern Song coinage and might be able to speak more directly to your concerns. In short, I'd say that I think that Hartill should be used as a guide, not gospel. Here is mine example of Xi Ning. Much rougher than yours, though I do like the blue patina. I've assigned it 16.119 but feel free to let me know if you disagree!
I disagree with the attribution of 16.198. The writing of the Xi is definitely different. (look at the left segement) This variation is not listed in Hartill, but shown in "Zhongguo Guqian Daji", page 481, nr. 5
I am not really the guy you need, but here are some thoughts to start the ball rolling. Have you ever looked inside of a copy of Werner Burger’s “Ching Cash”? One passed through my hands many years back, and my first thought when looking inside was that the guy was insane. Hundreds of cash coins all attributed not only to different mints but also to different years at each mint. And they all looked the same to me. Here is a link to an article on him https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post...027/coin-stash-puts-new-spin-chinas-100-years Excerpt: “He let me have 70 bags full of coins, each about 100kg,” Burger says. “I could choose whatever I wanted. The rest he used as scrap metal. This was the basis of my collection, and it was 95 to 96 per cent Qing coins.” Lau’s gift was a stroke of luck. “I had enough coins to do what nobody else had done,” Burger says. “Arrange the coins year by year.” So maybe he was sane, but I figured only one guy in a million would look at those coins and say – hey – there are loads of different sorts! And I was not that guy. Hartill was quite a step from Schjoth when it came out. Some people had got so used to the old Schjoth numbers that they gave up collecting Chinese coins in disgust when Hartill appeared. For myself, I was kind of disappointed to see the old Wade-Giles names go. But Hartill was welcome because there were a few quite common cash coins that were not in Scjoth. And loads more spades in Hartill. And with Schjoth, people would think their own S. 630 that was fake, when really, it was Schjoths 630 that was (an obvious) fake. Etc. Anyhow – getting to your point. I believe that for major N. Sung cash issues there are people who claim at peak there were 26 different mints running and they can distinguish all 26 by calligraphic appearance. But if you look in Hartill you will tend to find only three varieties even for common issues and even they difficult to tell apart from his illustrations. So for my part - I do not bother with his minor variations. But chacun son goût Rob T
Just out of curiosity - if you have time - how many varieties does "Zhongguo Guqian Daji" have for Hartill 16.235+ (Yuan Feng, single, running script) Rob T
11, but that is nothing compared to Gorny who list around 200 variations for Yuan Feng, running script, 1 cash. BTW, the coin listed by dougsmit as 16.198 is Gorny 32
Thank you. That was the one that bothered me most. I agree with EWC3 that my purposes are best served by sticking to just one category but Hartill would have made that easier if he had used one base number (like 198) and then added a decimal or letter (198.1 or 198a) for the rest.
Ha! Yes – well I did say I was not the guy to ask. Many thanks If anyone is interested - google “Gorny chinese cash” and scroll down to page 107 in the book and he starts to describe 26 types for 26 mints…….. Kind of makes my point that doing them by Hartill variety is either more than you need to do, or a whole lot less….. I wonder if anyone apart from the Chinese ever kept track of issues in quite this subtle way? Seems to me that often enough with some copper issues even getting the guy to hit the flan with enough of the die was too big an ask Yeah – I vaguely recollect I suggested something like that to David, back when he started, but people always seem to have very fixed ideas of their own on how to number Rob T
Thanks for the link Rob. I can now send this to my loved ones, and anything I do will now look sane by comparison.
While I find Gorny overkill I saw some things there that I really liked. He uses the decimal system lumping all the minor variations. There are places where he discusses how to tell two easily confused variations for example telling us to extend the inner rim down and seeing where it intersects the character. If he explains 'why' I should care about the differences, I might forgive there being too much information for my level and buy the book. I have done photos (for free!) for two books by friends. In both cases I told the author that his plan, layout or system of organization needed work. Neither listened. People always do have very fixed ideas of their own. My opinion did not matter. After all, I was not even going to buy a book - so I guess I did not work for free after all. We will never know if either book would have sold more copies if it had been less obtuse.
I think I know why this was going on – but I am open to correction. Here is my story Way back in time I worked in head office operations in a big semi-public organisation. My number skills were OK - so I got seconded into a head office finance project. While there I discovered a secret. Regional offices thought their computerised financial data was private to themselves, but head office had a back door into their data - that regions did not know about. I was in a team of two – we drove round regional offices asking questions my partner already knew the answers to – to see who told the truth. I think that is the sort of thing Burger (and presumably Gorny) are looking at. The idea that ahead of distributing mother cash to regional mints very subtle variations were added to each one – so that central government could secretly check up on what was going on at provincial mints. I should add that I have doubts in two ways about this, both whether it happened, and also, whether it worked if it was happening……. Yep – been there - and more than twice. I will just run through events in one case – in part because a lot of details concerning my criticisms already went public on a different group. I should warn that what follows in part derives from something like gossip, but from people who were in a position to know. Its well known Steve Album sold his personal Islamic collection to Tuebingen. And that the money came from Volkswagen. I was also told Album considered the job of curating it himself, but Tuebingen demanded a German scholar. In the end Lutz Ilisch got the curating job, but with a committee overseeing his work, which included Michael Bates. The aim became to divide the collection up according to geographical zones and farm different parts out to specialist scholars. I think the project is still ongoing. My criticism concerned the organisation of the material. All prior catalogues (BM, Mitchiner) were organised by dynasty. Most experienced collectors could quickly figure out what (say) an Omayyad dirhem looked like, and in earlier catalogues, you just went to that dynasty and started looking. Not so in the Tuebingen catalogue. Omayyad dirhems were split up and dispersed geographically over many projected volumes. A pattern repeated for all dynasties as each catalogue associated a few 9th century coins with a few 19th century coins by town, disregarding the fact the 19th century coins had almost no feature in common with the Omayyad issues aside from the mint name. To find your Omayyad coin you would have to buy many huge volumes and perhaps look in them all. Shortly after that the Ashmolean head hunted Album to bring out its own set of Islamic catalogues – that were organised traditionally by dynasty. And Album brought out his own Checklist – again organised by dynasty. Early on I got into correspondence with the publisher of the Tuebingen work concerning getting a discount for taking three copies of one volume. They were rather sniffy about the idea. Curiously though, more than 10 years after - my name was dug out of the file and I got a letter asking why I was not buying further volumes. Perhaps sales were not going too well? I should add that I have the highest regard for Lutz Ilisch, a man of great knowledge, a teacher of professors, although to my knowledge, never a professor himself. Rob T
