A mission to collect coins from every province from China...

I have been caught up with a lot of things hence I was quiet. Hopefully things settle down and I get a bit more time to document and write.

I have been on a mission to collect silver and copper (or alternative metals) coins from every province in China. That mission started more than a decade (!) ago.

The challenge with Chinese coins as you would guessed is that there are just too many counterfeits. Prices have definitely rocketed over the last decade. There are also some coins that would not appear in the market for years! When they do appear, I often miss out due to absurd prices. What started out as a naive 'this looks easy' thought based on low catalog value (at that time) became an obsession to hunt down very obscure coins.

Some of the more challenging ones are from the financially poorer provinces such as Gansu and Guizhou. Defunct provinces such as Xikang or combined China Soviet provinces are difficult too. The Xikang 100 cash is one of the last few coins that I needed to complete this set.



I'd like to think that I've got pretty much good examples from each province and call this complete. A couple are excessively rare but I'm happy to leave it at that. I'm glad that I started this collection early as some of the coins are close to impossible to find. Today some pieces have sold for prices that could possibly be enough for a home deposit (!)

Link to collection:

http://gxseries.com/numis/china/china_province.htm

I probably would not dream of starting a similar set today!

Please feel free to share pictures of your Chinese coins

 

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50 yaun, 1965, One year only.