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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kvasir, post: 84271, member: 4139&quot;]<b>Tai-Ching Coin</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I wouldn&#039;t get my hopes up, at least on the Qing copper cash.</p><p><br /></p><p>- The &quot;<b>Szechuen Province</b>&quot; coin is an obvious forgery.</p><p>The obverse (one with most of the inscription) says it&#039;s &quot;Made in the Jilin Province&quot; ( 吉林省造 ). This is an obvious mismatch with the reverse, and I doubt very much you have a mule. </p><p><br /></p><p>Nevertheless, if this is genuine (which it obviously isn&#039;t), the centre 4 characters would indicate the coin was made in the Guang Xu Era, or sometime between 1875 and 1908.</p><p><br /></p><p>- I can read the <b>Tai-Ching </b> coin inscription but you&#039;d have to determine if the coin is authentic. I&#039;m also very suspicious of how genuine these coins are when similar period cash coins with the square holes are usually heavily worned beyond recognition. </p><p><br /></p><p>The Chinese inscription on the reverse (assuming that&#039;s the one with dragon) says it&#039;s made in the Xuan Tong Era, some time between 1909 and 1910. The Xuan Tong Era is ruled by the emperor known to the West as Puyi, the Last Emperor.</p><p><br /></p><p>The middle of the obverse (assuming that&#039;s the one with all the inscriptions) says it&#039;s a Copper Coin of the Great Qing (Tai-Ching, or Qing Dynasty). The single character 粵 in the middle circle at the centre of the coin is the abbreviation for the province of Canton or today&#039;s Guangdong province. The top 4 columns of swirly inscription is Manchu, the imperial script, which I can&#039;t help you with. </p><p><br /></p><p>Franking the Manchu script are two Chinese characters that usually indicate the lunar year cycle. &quot;丙午&quot; indicates that it&#039;s the year of the Horse of 1846, 1906, 1966 etc. The lunar year runs on a 60-year cycle. Obviously, none of these falls under the Xuan Tong Era. Thus, if they indicate the year instead of just for indexing of some sort, these two characters could disauthenticate your coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>That said, it&#039;s worth looking at the rest of the inscriptions. The bottom indicates the value, which says it&#039;s 20 mil, or 0.20 of a cash cent. I&#039;m not too sure what &quot;戶部&quot; means. Abbreviation for &quot;Ministry of Finance&quot; perhaps?</p><p><br /></p><p>Supplementing the info given previously:</p><p>- The Yunnan 2 cent and 5 cent coins were made in the 21st year of the </p><p>Republic, or <b>1932</b>.</p><p>- The 25th year of the Republic coin matches the year inscribed: <b>1936</b>.</p><p><br /></p><p>The verdict? I&#039;m 95% sure that your Qing coins are forgeries or fantasy pieces, whatever you want to call them. And the shopkeeper was right, they are junk, but interesting exonumia nevertheless provided you can read the inscriptions. </p><p><br /></p><p>I once almost bought some at one of these Chinatown stores in Toronto. But I thought these coins are in condition too good for their age, and they dump these in a plastic little trade free for customers to search through just like other merchandises. I wouldn&#039;t dump my 100 year-old coins in a tray for anyone to pick through, would I?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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