I'm interested in corresponding with any serious collector of Chinese coins produced during the Tang Dynasty and earlier. Especially interested in attribution of the various Ban Liang and Wu Zhu varieties since there is very little information on these types in Western works. Thanks, Jim (ggienut) jvanek1445@aol.com
In the future I plan to collect more of these. I really got interested in this stuff when I was in China a couple of years ago and visited some museums there - what a fascinating and fairly well documented era of history. I have a few T'ang dynasty coins that came in, incredibly, a lot of Ming dynasty coins from much later on. To a lot of people early Chinese coins are a bit of an enigma, but really they are very easy to identify and read with just a basic knowledge of Mandarin characters. Meanwhile, China commemorates the T'ang dynasty era with modern coins including this one from 1998 that I bought whilst I was there:
Thanks for your response. I've been a serious collector of Chinese Cash coins as well as the many interesting early forms of Chinese "coins" used prior to the round coins of the Zhou Dynasty. At present, however, I've narrowed my search to the various varieties of the Ban Liang and Wu Zhu coins. There are so many different raised and incuse lines, dots, and additional characters on these pieces and not much is written about the varieties in Western catalogs. David Hartill lists a few but there are hundreds of varieties that he does not list. I'm looking for a bit of input on attributing these pieces to their proper place in history as I'm certain that many of the Wu Zhus are not Han issues but from later dynasties. It is possible, or I should sway probable, that many of these were privately cast and that the additional characters represent personal names or minter's marks. I believe that many of the coins with incuse marks could be tokens or counters used in gaming. Does anyone have any theories or proof of the exact issuers of these interesting pieces? Although I can read the characters on Chinese coins, I am unable to read Chinese text so purchasing books in Chinese is not an option. Anyway, thanks again for your reply. If you haven't already purchased a copy of David Hartill's book "Cast Chinese Coins" it is by far the best book written for the western collector. Jim (ggienut)
