Hi. I receved some coins/tokens from china, and I'm tring to identify them. I'm not realy sure if they are fake or not, but I'd like to identify them prior to starting researching the autentice. They were made between IV BC to I AC, If any one could tell me the inscriptons on these...
I doubt if any of those are authentic. Those are commonly found in "tourists" sites and even so, those were supposely plentiful. There is no way of telling if those are authentic unless you send them to a mass spectrometer and determine their ages, which is too costly and silly. The first "coin" seems to be very odd as the text is too modernized, as I can recognize it. Coins made in the 4th BC to 1st AD are basically old unreadable text, which means the rest are unreadable by a normal person. I will get back to you on the first coin as soon as I get out my dictionary and double check it. (I don't carry a dictionary with me all time long)
gxseries is right, the first one does seem to be fake. The kind of font simply didn't exist in the time frame. Compare to the archaic script in all the others, only a few words here and there are recognisable by a modern literate person in Chinese. To me, someone who is literate in Chinese, there is still a few words that don't make sense to me because of archaic usage which may well be pretended. The one on the left may say where the coin is authorised. And the place may have been Lin-an (臨安府 ), somewhere in present day Zhejiang province. The reverse says "exactly 300 mil". Then again, your coin might have been a fake anyway.
If you would like to get good solid information I recommend you post your pictures at http://www.zeno.ru/ Include size and weight. This site has many people who are serious collectors (sometimes a little too serious) of Chinese coins. I amsure you will get help there.
The Hidden Kingdom Yeah, I was working for a Japanese company when I started collecting coins and I stacked some Chinese cash on my desk. The company treasurer came by and we had a nice chat. He had majored in Chinese in college and the company had posted him to China for two years before he came to the states. He told me that you could buy all you wanted of these coins at the Great Wall. They are newly made to look old day in and day out. Mike
