Hello there. My dad just gave me this coin, he's had it for a little while and thought I'd like it. I'm just curious for some more information about it. I have a feeling it's a knock off, but I don't really know. Any info is appreciated. There is some writing on the edge of the coin, looks like some characters and some roman letters, giorgi or something along those lines.
Well, change the top character on the reverse ("five") to "one", delete the large characters on each side of the obverse bust, and change the edge markings to circles, and you would have a fairly good imitation of Y#329.1, a 1914 silver 1 yuan coin.
Characters "伍圆" on the first picture means "Five Dollars" in Chinese. Characters "中華民國三年" means "the third year of Republic of China", "甘肃" means "Gansu Province" of China. The coin shows the bust of President Yuan Shikai. The coin is a five dollars coin of Republic of China minted in Gansu Province 1914. And by the way, I think it is not genuine.
The Standard Catalog of World Coins uses "Kansu" as the English version of the Provincial name. I absolutely agree. The SCWC lists only a 1 Yuan coin as having been minted in Kansu/Gansu with that design: Genuine ones are 26.6g of .900 silver, and about 38mm wide. A 5 Yuan coin would have to weigh 133g, and either be much thicker, much wider, or both!
Thanks all for the quick reply. I had a feeling it was fake, just too shiny and heavy, but it wasn't magnetic so I wasn't 100% sure. Thanks a lot for providing all the info that you did. I did measure it as best as I could, and it was way bigger than 38mm, closer to 48mm. Here it is next to a 1953 British Crown for reference. Thanks again for the help, and I'll let my dad know that he picked up a fake :goofer:
Fake! The 'look' is all wrong, the wreath on the reverse is too small and there is no listing in Kann of a Kansu dollar with the L. Giorgi [the engraver] mark.
