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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;gxseries, post: 1842727, member: 4373&quot;]Early Chinese provincial coins are an interesting field if you read more into it. A lot of provinces tried to strike / cast coins that are available within their provinces. At times, they had to import metals from other provinces at a high cost. As you may guess, all parts of the world are blessed with all different kinds of minerals - some areas may be more blessed than others. A good example that I can think of is from two different provinces - Xinjiang (Sinkiang) and Gansu (Kansu). While they look like they are next to each other on a map, Xinjiang is blessed with various metals - from gold to copper whereas Gansu is stuck with an unusual situation: it had little silver and copper compared to other provinces however, it had plenty of antimony. In fact, Gansu tried to issue coins that were struck (?) in antimony but this failed miserably. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the early days of cast coin history, Xinjiang cast coins had high copper content whereas Gansu cast coins had high antimony content. This metallurgical history kept repeating itself during the Qing dynasty as well as Republican era.&nbsp; If I recall correctly, Xinjiang have struck coins in 1 tael (approximately 37 grams) whereas coins from other provinces struck coins in 7.2 mace, which is around 27 grams - big difference. The Gansu fat man dollar coin (Yuan Shi Kai) is an excellent example to illustrate how Gansu struggled to procure silver, and therefore it had to have mintmark to show which province it originated from. Obviously merchants avoided Gansu silver coins like plague as most other Fat Man coin&#039;s silver content range around 80-90% whereas Gansu silver coin is around 70% or less. Needless to say, Gansu coins are worth a fair amount due to lower survival rates compared to other provinces. </p><p><br /></p><p>Mintage figures may seem to suggest that some coins should be more common, you need to remember that a lot of metals were melted down during the Chinese Communist revolution in 1949. While a lot of references note that pig iron was created by pots and pans &quot;donated&quot; by peasants, a lot of coins were melted down as well. (They are metals afterall). Many materials not related to the Communist ideologies had to go. On top of that, it was common for old coins to be made into jewellery. While mintage figures say one thing, there is no proper study related to the survival rate of such coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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