Vietnam Silver Lang questions

So, I did something yesterday that I have a bad habit of doing. I was at a coin show and purchased something because I thought it was neat. I like unusual (to me) coins. No prior knowledge of these.

I'm primarily a world coin guy but the far east is not my strong point.

The coin is labeled as a Vietnam (Annam) AR Lang 1802-1820 KM 179 Photos below are showing all six sides.

Question #1: Can anyone translate the markings for me

Question #2: This piece measures 36.72 grams which is slightly off from what Krause lists it. It is 43x13x7mm. To my eyes the text doesn't match the photos that I can find online. Is there a chance this is attributed wrong?

Question #3: It appears that there are later countermarks applied. Does anyone have any insight into these?

 

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Hey @mrbreeze , do you have the book for these?

 

I'll take a stab at the Chinese characters.
They in are a bit stylized script which makes them hard for me to read.
I'm giving Chinese readings as I don't know Vietnamese at all. Top right:
精銀 (jing1yin2) = pure silver
壹兩 (yi1liang3) = one tael
More later if I can figure it out. I'm slow looking this stuff up.

 

Here's a similar one on Numista:
Its characters are "嘉隆年造" (Made in the year of Gia Long?)
But the 2nd and 4th characters of yours look different.
They look reminiscent of the ones on yours but yours look a bit garbled.
The script on yours looks very odd, almost like the person who scribed it didn't know Chinese characters or something.

 

Try km180.1

I don’t know if they used official stamps on lang bars, but often times, stamps which aren’t matching a purposeful counter mark are punches to test for purity or confirm that it is what it is supposed to be. Not sure if that is the case here, but the punch inside the circle looks like a punch to detect silver content. Different businesses had different punches so that may explain the three different marks.

 

Did the dealer you bought it from sell these types of things or was it a 1 piece sort of thing?

 

You could try to send your photos to Joe Lang of Steve Album Coins. He could give you some idea about this bar. Joe is a leading authority on Islamic and Asian coins and related items.

Here's his email address:

joe@stevealbum.com

 

The dealer I purchased from only had 1 of these but he is a well known world coin dealer.