This coin just arrived today, and I am super excited about it. I have been wanting this type for years, and one became available on eBay. I had $90 in eBay bucks to burn, and that put this coin in the price range I wanted to pay. The patina is particularly glorious and exactly the colors I love on Chinese coins. This coin is a San Zhu (三鉌), cast by Emperor Han Wudi around 136 BC. It was introduced to replace the Ban Liang (半兩), which had a denomination of 8 zhu but had shrunk to a weight of 3-4 zhu. This was seen as undesirable, and Wudi wanted to issue a coin whose denomination had a bearing on its weight. To effectively replace the Ban Liangs, this new coin must be popular and circulate, so the nominal weight was a bit higher than the 3 zhu denomination the inscription would imply (1.5g vs ~2.5g). As a result, these coins were instantly extremely popular, but you could probably guess what happened. (What would have happened if a $20 piece had $25 worth of gold in it?) The San Zhus were subsequently melted in vast quantities for their excess metal, making them extremely rare today. In addition, this issue was quickly ended and the Ban Liangs were issued once again. It wasn’t until a couple decades later when the Wu Zhu (五鉌) was introduced. These had a nominal weight of 2.5-3g, which was in line with the denomination. These proved to be extremely popular and successful and were the staple of the Chine economy until 618 AD. The San Zhu I bought: An early large-size 8-zhu Ban Liang: A late 4-zhu Ban Liang (with the very rare sun and moon symbols): A Western Han Wu Zhu:
Very nice! Random thought - I know that today a lot of Chinese people avoid things with the number 4 for superstitious reasons (it supposedly sounds like "death"?) I wonder if that had any bearing on the apparent failure of the 4 Zhu coins in ancient times?
You mean like these? My guess is that 3 Zhu was tried because the current Ban Liangs had a nominal weight of 3 zhu, and that 5 Zhus were adopted because they are a fundamental unit in a base-10 system. But the ancient Chinese were quite the superstitious bunch, so who knows.
