Need help id' on a chinese coin. Atleast I think it is chinese. :D

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Chinese all right - another fake! It's a copy of the Yuan Shih-Kai "fat man dollar" 1 yuan coin. (His name and the denomination sound the same, but are written differently.) The date is Republic Year 5 (1916), a year for which the mintage of this particular coin was zero.

Real ones are 26.4g of .800 silver and come in several varieties from 1914-1921. Krause lists them as Y#329-Y#329.6. The effigy is that of an interesting historical figure. Yuan Shi-Kai was a leader of the revolution who served as the first President of the Republic before annointing himself as "Emperor". That lasted a verrrrrry short time before he was ousted and the better known (at least to the west) Sun Yat Sen took over the Presidency.

 

the coin posted is 20 cent not dollar, it is listed in krause as Y327

 

I don't think it is a fake. My grandfather passed about 15 years ago and these were left to me from him. He has had them since the 1950's.

 

It's very wrong to assume that because a coin has been in a collection for very long period of time, it's not a counterfeit. Contempory counterfeits have existed since day one of coins circulating. I do have two rather deceiving Kiangnan silver coins (20 cents size) that are counterfeit. Struck in probably nickel-copper alloy, they look quite deceiving and gives that silver ring noise but just 1g underweight which gave it away.

First thing to check is to find out if the weight is around the technical specs - they can be +- 0.2 grams off but not too much.

I think it's OK but it doesn't hurt to check the weight of the coin first.

 

I agree with you. What I am saying is that I know it is not a contemporary counterfeit. Atleast in the sense that it wasn't made yesterday. I feel it is genuine.

 

Actually the term "contemporary" in terms of counterfeits means one that is contemporary to the real thing (an old counterfeit made to fool people who would spend or receive it).
I agree with gxseries and don't see anything about your coin to suggest it's fake, at least not from the pictures. The exact size and weight would certainly help confirm it.

 

Agreed, and agree with GXseries. Almost all chinese silver was counterfeited almost from the day they introduced a new coin.

I wonder if the black stuff on the surface is going to throw his weight off?

 

Fortunately it looks like good ol' honest toning, not anything applied onto the surface. So it shouldn't affect the weight any.

 

Once again, a contemporary counterfeit means that it was something made back in the old days - it may not be a modern counterfeit but it is still a counterfeit. Here's a couple of examples:





A genuine one would have looked something like this:



The real danger is, the usual diagnosis that one use to claim it's a counterfeit gets thrown out:

Bad details
Poor edging
Magnetic

Don't fit all of them. It might have a poorer design but one might think because they are "worn", they must have circulated and hence genuine. Dangerous assumption. The only one item that they didn't pass is the weight test. Might not pass the SG test but that gets more technical.

This here becomes a lot more difficult as the designs of Jiangnan coins for every year is quite different. I don't have a similar year and variety to compare to but you really need to know what you are collecting. I'm still treading my way carefully on this - got burned a few times but I guess that's how some people learn.

 

Oops got the terms mixed up.

I meant to say modern counterfeit.

 

I would simply add to gx's great post that contemporary counterfeits most of the time are a different nature than most modern counterfeits. Contemporary ones, according to Hahn, were usually made of debased silver, not the white metal many if not most modern ones are. So, you can usually see silver surfaces with them. The nature of these counterfiets were to fool shopkeepers, who were not numismatists but were very used to worrying about fakes. Many shopkeepers had test to make sure a coin was silver, therefor most of these contemporary counterfeits were maybe 50% silver versus the usual alloy. This could be enough to fool a silver test, but still give enough profit to the forger.

With a contemporary counterfeit, along with weight you have to check diameter, as many were slightly smaller than the originals.

Chris