Hi - for obvious reasons, I can't easily google this coin for info. Does anyone have an idea what it is? Thank you in advance, James
Rotate the top picture a quarter turn to the left and your bottom coin 180* and you will have the right orientation. Your coin is a Chinese cash coin from the emperor Ch'ien Lung from 1736-1795. https://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/china/china8.htm
It reads top to bottom, left to right, Ch'ien Lung (emperor name) Tong Bao (circulating currency). On the reverse, it says Boo Yuwan (I think...since OP's picture is upside down, I'm tilting my head lol), which is the mint in Beijing.
@furryfrog02 is correct, it's a Chinese "cash" coin from the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736-95), from the Board of Works mint in Beijing. (One of the most common emperors and common mints.) Here's a transliteration of the legends: The obverse has four characters in standard Chinese script. These are read in the order top-bottom-right-left to give "qian long tong bao". Qianlong is the era (Chinese coins normally feature the name of the era, rather than the Emperor's personal name), "tong" is "current" and "bao" is "coin" or "treasure", so the obverse can be translated "current coin of the Qianlong era". The reverse is in Manchurian script and reads "boo yuwan", which is the transliteration of Chinese "bao yuan". Bao again means coin or treasure, and yuan can mean "first", "origin", or "source"; a translation might be "Source of Coins", though this mint is usually listed as the far more boring-sounding Board of Works, which is the government bureau that issued the coin. (The other Beijing mint, Bao Chuan, is "Fountain of Coins" or Board of Revenue. Various other mints exist, which are generally just names of the city or province where they were located.) This is a very cool but also very common coin, and would retail for not more than a dollar or so. Hope this helps.
If you ever come across ancient Chinese coins that you want to identify, there's a great website for that. By showing you a series of pictures (which you select from), it slowly filters and narrows down the possibilities, until you get to only a handful. Then you can compare yours to see which one it is. I found it helpful. https://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/china/chinaid.htm
That's the one I used to ID OP's coin. It is a great reference site. This one is also good: http://www.sportstune.com/chinese/coins/idpage.html
I didn't know about the second one. I'll jot it down for the future. Thanks. For now, link not working though.