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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;manymore, post: 754480, member: 17118&quot;]I am not able to identify this coin, either, and I&#039;m not sure I can add much to what hontonai has already said.</p><p><br /></p><p>In Chinese, the inscription on the obverse side is read (vertically top to bottom, starting at the right) as <i>san</i> (?) <i>nian</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>The first character is <i>san</i> meaning &quot;three&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>The second character is unclear.&nbsp; It may be <i>shi</i>, meaning &quot;ten&quot;, but the bottom of the character seems to have two &quot;legs&quot; when it should only have one.&nbsp; I&#039;m not even sure it is a character since it may be just part of the indistinct &quot;blob&quot; of metal on the right side of the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>The third character is <i>nian</i> meaning &quot;year&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, the right portion of the inscription reads &quot;third year&quot; or, possibly, &quot;thirtieth year&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>The left part of the inscription (again read top to bottom) is <i>da hua ming</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Usually, this would refer to a &quot;reign title&quot; and dynasty.&nbsp; If the middle character were not there, the <i>da ming</i> would refer to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).</p><p><br /></p><p>The middle character <i>hua</i> presents a real problem.&nbsp; There are no Ming Dynasty reign titles with a single character.&nbsp; There was a Ming Dynasty reign title &quot;<i>cheng <u>hua</u></i>&quot;, using the same <i>hua</i> character, but <a href="http://primaltrek.com/chinesecoins.html#cheng_hua" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://primaltrek.com/chinesecoins.html#cheng_hua" rel="nofollow">no coins were ever cast</a> during that reign.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, the syntax of placing the reign title between the <i>da</i> and <i>ming</i> is not correct.</p><p><br /></p><p>A literal translation of <i>da hua ming</i> would be &quot;great transforming light&quot; which, unfortunately, is not very enlightening in this case.</p><p><br /></p><p>As has already been stated, the character on the reverse side of the coin is <i>wu</i> meaning &quot;five&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>As a final comment, this coin does not resemble Ming Dynasty coins which were round with a square hole in the middle.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gary[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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