I revised my article on these odd coins and here it is again. I managed to obtain some more examples of these coins. In 1949 the San Francisco Mint struck 2,000,000 and the Mexico City Mint struck 8,000,000 copies of a Mexico Peso dated 1898 for use in China. These were made for the Chiang Kai-Shek Nationalist government (Kuomintang), which was losing it's war with the Chinese Communists. The Nationalists needed the silver to pay their soldiers who would no longer accept paper money. The dollar-size Mexico silver 8 reales and peso coins were used extensively in China as "trade dollars" in the 19th and early 20th centuries, so the Chinese people and merchants were familiar with them. http://www.brianrxm.com/pages/mexsf2.htm
That was a very interesting read Brian, anI liked the pics of the coins it helped to show what you were talking about. Man you can realy see the difference though with the copies LOL
I have updated my article on these coins and put it on my website under "Mexico 1898 Peso". http://www.brianrxm.com