Does anyone know of any good sources of ancient chinese coins? I bought a few off ebay, and I find them fasinating, and I want to get more! I just don't trust ebay. I got lucky once, but when dealing with things from china... Anyone know of a good source for these coins? Thanks, David
VCoins. The dealers there backup the authenticity of everything they sell. Various dealers in the Ancients area of the site have them. If you want a reference Jerry Walker (on VCoins) is a great book dealer & has some. A lot of what's on eBay is fake.
Here is one of the premier dealers in Chinese coinage: http://www.fsrcoin.com/index.html Frank is a great guy to deal with & should anything/everything you need. Tell him I referred you!
This seems to be a good starter deal. I've been thinking about getting it. Ken's an excellent dealer. http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/kendorney/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=1502
Scratch that. I just ordered the package deal. If anyone's interested I can post picks when it arrives.
I would be careful buying ancient chinese. There are lots of copies, originally inteneded for jewellery use on the market as real !
I would be interested in pics of the coins when they arrive. I also would like to know about the quality of the book they ship with it. David
Here are the coins (he ended up sending 12 instead of 10)... I'll post info about the book & stuff a little later.
Wow, they look very nice for being thousands of years old. Pleasingly packaged too in those vinyl flips. Are they guaranteed to be genuine?
Yes, this dealer guarantees authenticity. Besides his own website he's also a VCoins dealer & all VCoins dealers agree to a code of ethics, part of which states "I will vouch for the authenticity of items I sell and will have no time limit on the return of items discovered to be non-authentic. I will offer a full cash refund upon return of any such item, including the cost of return shipping."
Ok, the book. The book is 48 pages, titled 'A Comprehensive Finding List of Chinese Cash 618 AD to 1921 AD & Lockhart's Listing of the Chinese Dynasties' (isbn 0917114019). For the most part it's a bunch of charts where you find the Chinese characters on the top of the coin & then follow that to another chart all of which helps you ID it & lists ID's relevant to various references. At this point I haven't actually had a chance to try & use it or anything. I'm sure it's just a very basic reference & if someone was to really get into collecting Cash a better reference would be desirable. As for the package deal. I'm happy with it. I'll mess with the book over the next few days, but I think the money was worth it for the coins alone. I don't know that I'm real interested in a massive Cash collection, but most of these are decent examples & make a nice addition to my collection as a whole.
Hehe... that's a funny thing to say, as I believe everything these days is made in China - just about, anyway.. Check the back or bottom of a few household items and you're bound to find a few... It is of course a bit of aproblem when it comes to Chinese dealers, on the other hand... :>/
HI I am new in this forum and I have a collection of anchint coins thet i am collecting and i have BOUGHET This chinese mold for coins and i would like to know if anyone knowes whet Is the age of this coins and if its look real becuse it is from iron and i dont know much in chinese coins becuse i am collecting roman coins I have atteched a photo of the iteam . WAITING TO YOUR ANSWER YUVAL
Here's a lightened version showing the detail, which appears to be one half of a mould for four coins with two obverse and two reverse sides showing. My problem with its authenticity is that it is not consistent with the basic method used for casting cash coins. The following quotation from Jacobs & Vermuele, Japanese Coinage 2d Ed. (1972), p. 40, describes the process: At this stage the utility of the square holes comes into play as the coins are stacked on a square bar and the edges are filed to remove the stubs of the branches.
If you are going to collect Chinese coins, two good sources are Frank Robinson (already mentioned in thread) and Scott Semans (www.coincoin.com). Both have been dealing in Chinese coins for more than 20 years. Until you can recognize fake Chinese coins, be very very very careful on Ebay. Most of the coins being offered from China are FAKE. In addition, it is illegal to export coins made before 1949 from China (used to be before 1912, but the law was changed in 2007). There are also a couple dealers in Singapore who sell mainly fake Chinese coins. Generally speaking, about 90% of the Chinese coins (made before 1950) offered on Ebay are fake.
