I had this with a bunch of Japan 1 Yen coins and I didn’t realize it was a different design until just recently. Aluminum, reeded edge, about the same size as a Japan 1 yen coin… Any ideas? Thanks!
Cool ! I wish I knew , It's late . Hopefully someone will be early morning unless @potty dollar 1878 knows ?
Taiwan 1955 jiao (ten fen) - like our dime. ROC year 44. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces5648.html
Telltale sweet potato shape is the shape of the island of Taiwan, or as the olympics like to say, “Chinese taipei “
For Asian/Chinese characters, it can be hard to know how to type them to do a search on Numista. I set up an example search here with only the weight (1 to 1.5 g), diameter (19 mm) and material (aluminum). It only gave 22 results, so it's pretty easy to scan through and see if one's coin is listed, even if one can't read any Chinese characters. I use weight/diameter/material searches to ID a lot of my old Italian States coppers where the lettering is too worn to read and only a little of the design is visible. Editing the date range to avoid modern coins and excluding patterns/commemoratives can also help narrow down the number or results.
You can download an app called Pleco Chinese Dictionary. It allows you to use your finger to write out the characters and it will translate into a character, and into English.
I am very careful about apps and always check to see if they are Chinese in origin, but this app is produced by an American company, RED VENTURES COMPANY, and seems okay. I hadn't heard about it before, so thanks for the post.
I used that in college when studying Chinese. Also helps a ton when translating texts from friends and family.
Thanks for the recommendation. I do use handwriting recognition apps to try to read unknown characters. Many will get impatient and go to the suggested character before I'm done writing (such as when I pause to look at the other half after writing the radical). And they tend to be pretty unforgiving if the stroke order or shapes are a little off. I'll have to see how this one compares. I mostly use mdbg.net because I can use it directly from my browser without downloading an app. But if I get the strokes wrong, my desired character either won't show up or won't be near the top of the suggestions. Here's an example of how it interprets my atrocious handwriting trying to write "寶". It took me 3 tries to get the right suggestion at the top of the list. And writing characters with a trackpad is not very ergonomic.