I figured you all might find at least a little interest in a couple scarce errors in ancient Chinese Coins. The one on the left is a Ban Liang with the characters reversed. This is called a “Chuan Xing” error. These results when the characters are rougly symmetric, and the mould engraver accidentally engraved the inscription into the mould as it was supposed to look on the coin. This would produce a reversed image the image on the coin. The second resulted from moulds being put together incorrectly. This particular Huo Quan (I can tell from the fabric) mas made with two reverses, making an entirely blank coin. The opposite is a coin with two obverses, but I have yet to acquire one due to cost (more like not feeling like spending the money to acquire one with more-interesting coins available). Here are examples of what normal coins are supposed to look like.
This does not make any sense to me. Won't 1 reverse have some design on the Die? If 2 reverses are used then we would see 2 of the same design. I'm thinking that it's just a blank coin that was never struck? Or am I misunderstanding they method on how these Chinese coins were made?
I can easily see how you could become so interested in ancient Chinese coins. I'm beginning to fall under their spell myself from having viewed your amazing posts.
Well, if you have to cast the flans anyway in order to strike them ... @TypeCoin971793 has an example that shows how it was done:
Here is a Da Quan Wu Shi mould for sale by Scott Semans. These would be pressed into clay and then stacked on one another. Notice how there are both obverses and reverses on the same side. If the moulds were not rotated correctly, then the two obverse/reverse error will occur. That is why mother moulds were a thing. You just stamp the design you want in a block of clay, fire the block with the imprssion, and then cast coins. The process became much more efficient as moulds became more reusable and the Chinese became more adept at casting coinage. Here is a mother mould from my collection.
The majority of Chinese coins are uniface, meaning there is design on one side only. Thus this example looks 'blank'. Just the opposite. Casting of coins was incredibly efficient. The Chinese were producing coins in the billions when Westerners (Lydians) were producing them by the thousands.
