I recently came into possession of an 1874-CC Trade Dollar, my first coin of that denomination. I think the coin itself grades a solid VF with a couple of weak spots, but when I put it in a holder I noticed that the obverse and reverse were both oriented the same way, unlike other coins. The orientation is along the lines of Code: ^ ^ | | instead of ^ | | v Is this normal for Trade Dollars?
Sounds like a 180 degree rotation - quite extreme for US coins. Most of the world orients it's coins that way. Maybe the coin you have is a counterfeit.
In my little understanding of detected Trade counterfeits, that's a simple way to detect a counterfeit from the orient. Just a guess, but I doubt it's real.
there are a lot of fakes out,i have one that looks very close except for looking like it was cast in sand .here's a link that may help.http://www.coinworld.com/news/102102/news-3.asp i got it from "jody526"
A trade dollar is a American silver dollar that (I don't know much about them) hsas more silver and is a little bigger in size. It was used in trade for other Countries. If you search online it will bring up a lot of pages I'm sure and photos also...they are a lot of fakes out there. Speedy
A great question trisha. In the later half of the 19th Century, and into the early 20th to some extent, silver coins circulated in the Far East at their bullion value, regardless of the country of issue. During that period a number of countries, including the U.S. from 1873-85, Japan from 1875-77, and Great Britain from about 1902-35 (I believe), issued coins which bore the denomination "Trade Dollar", and had their silver weight in grains, and their fineness, as part of the design. The U.S. and Japanese coins had 420 grains of pure silver, and the British were 416, all in a .900 silver/.100 copper alloy. In addition, Maria Therese thalers from Austria, and many other silver coins of similar size and composition, were widely used in international trade throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The thalers were minted of .833 silver, and contained just over 3/4-oz. of pure silver, slightly less than the .78 oz Yen and the .7876 typical Trade Dollar. Japanese Yen from 1867 to 1914, composed of 416 grains of .900 silver, are frequently inaccurately advertised as "Trade Dollars" on EBay, Yahoo, etc. They were in fact widely circulated at their silver weight, and in fact were demonetized in Japan for part of that time. The related subject of "chopmarks" arises from the custom of Chinese merchants of the time period counterstamping their own marks onto coins they had handled, as a certification of their value. Millions of yen were also officially counterstamped by the Osaka and Tokyo mints with the Japanese character "gin" (silver) during the period of demonetization in Japan, which ended in 1897.
The unfortunate facts are that there are so many counterfeits (intended for contemporary circulation) and replicas (made to con collectors) of all the different varieties of Trade Dollar that it's safe to say
At a coin show my wife and I attended a couple of weeks ago, we were searching for a trade dollar because of the beauty, although we did not know a lot about them. We had our grading guide, and our price list, but that was pretty much it. We saw one that was well cleaned and was pretty close to XF. However, I got a little scared. One dealer mentioned the vast number of counterfeits out there. I decided to stop looking and get more educated. Again, do not be shy about asking.
