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Message:: [QUOTE="gxseries, post: 2948527, member: 4373"]Numismat - the weight of silver coins are actually dependent on the province where they were struck at. Most silver coins from that era were struck close to technical specifications with the exception of Kirin Province (Jilin) which is well known to be at least 5% under. Merchants either did not accept Kirin coins or traded them at a discount. The same was with Gansu Province as their silver coins were struck in lower purity. I was not aware of the under weight Manchurian Province coins until I looked at my examples and they were around the 5.1g mark. And you are right - they are supposed to be of the weight 1.44 mace - 1 mace is about 3.78g which meant that it should be around 5.44g. As of why it is underweight, I do not know. Maybe because of the hardship they were facing with the Russians and Japanese, they were allowed to get away with it. Very interesting - will do a bit more research. I speculate that mints were 'forced' to strike coins at a budget but of course, the public would not be fooled. So far, all the provinces mentioned all did face a common issue - they were financially worse off compared to their peers.  Nevertheless back to the Korean coins, it is most certainly an interesting area. I believe the later coinage (1/2 won) would be within weight tolerance as it was struck in Osaka mint. Earlier coins struck before 1902 would be an interesting study as they were struck in Korea.[/QUOTE]