I've been doing a lot of research on these coins as I have purchased a few. It seems the experts are divided into 2 fields. 1. The first group believes the Mint officials bought these coins(5 Fun) to be melted down and remade into copper planchets to be used to make Chinese currency. After buying them they decided to shortcut and take the profit by just minting the Chinese coins overtop the Korean 5 Fun. This is not a bad theory as corruption is very rampant in China even today. 2. The second group states that Japanese Ronin living in China were upon hard times and decided they could make quick money by counterfeiting China cash coins atop the Korean 5 Fun coins they obtained from Korean merchants. After they would make the coins they would trade 10 for a silver dollar which was a pretty good profit indeed and could purchase over 200 Korean 5 Cash coins. However one of the big drawbacks were the hand presses they were using didn't have enough pressure to obliterate the complete 5 Fun design and you ended up with the host coin details showing behind the newly minted design. This is a very sound theory as well and one that seems to be Shared by TPG's After consulting TPG's they stated these are not gradable and that they are contemporary counterfeits. For those that don't know contemporary counterfeits are made about the same time as the host coin and tend to have minor to great values unlike the trash you can find on ebay today to cheat you. A lot these coins were minted over Chekiang 1903-06 posted below. the host 5 Fun coin looked like this: and the finish result looked something like this: There are also other 10 Cash coins from other provinces in China 10 minted on 5 Fun such as Kwangtung (Guangdong) and Hupeh (Hubei). Another problem you will face with these is that their were counterfeits made of these contemporary counterfeits. All in all I find the history of these coins quite interesting and despite them not able to be able to be graded and authenticated I will keep the 3 samples I have.
As a collector who is almost completely unschooled in cash coins, I find them nonetheless irresistible. I appreciate the opportunity to view images and read about them and enjoyed your comments and examples-thank you! Can you identify some reliable sources for cash coins? Would you list one or two books that you you find valuable re: a nice overview of Chinese coinage?
Actually i learned almost all my knowledge by trial and error and the fact i live in hong kong helps. I know the characters for which mint and how to read 10 or 20 cash. So it helps when purchasing from photos. We have a post your empire coins tab in world coins. There is alot of knowledge there. The problem with books is kosy are written in Chinese i think there are only a select few in english. Gxseries may know more on this as he collects alot of these as i do. I putting a set together of China copper cash coins, silver coins and paper notes for my daughter for when she become of age. Kind of a heritage thing as she is half chinese. In a few years she should be able to translate all the coins to me. If ypu need anything specific feel free to message me i will do what i can.
I've tried to assemble one copper and silver coin from each province. I highly recommend not to start one as it's just too costly, if not absurdly difficult. For more information of which province a coin could have come from, this might be of use. http://gxseries.com/numis/china/china_province.htm One book that I recommend is Eduard Kann - Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Coins. You can get the reprinted edition which is very affordable. If I recall correct, he happened to be in China in the early 1950s when Chinese coins were still affordable however counterfeits already was an issue back then. A lot of interesting writings which I have not got around to read everything - which is a shame. Ok and now back to the REAL topic. I did assemble a few overstruck coins but never looked into too much of this particular type. Now this has to change. If you are curious, here are some overstruck examples - some Chinese examples as well http://gxseries.com/numis/overstrike/world_overstrike.htm To start off with, I think it's important to look at the surviving examples. Hubei 10 cash Zhejiang 10 cash Hubei / Zhejiang muled 10 cash in coin alignment - this will be an important point of discussion Beiyang 10 cash Not too sure if there are other provinces involved. So far, all such coins are from Eastern part of China. Now to understand what was happening in Korea - the public had difficulty in trusting their nickel copper coins as they deemed it to be the 'cheap evil worthless silver looking coin'. Copper and silver coins were still the preferred coins. Machine struck coins were first struck in 1892, only to be issued to the public in 1894. The Korean Emperor had different plan of where the official Korean mint is to be set and had a bad choice of prioritization. Coin production continued to be an issue. The Bank of Japan stepped in, determined that it would be best for Osaka mint to strike coins and end coin production in Korea. Now here's my issue with the historical timeline. The last issued Korean copper coin was in 1902. Osaka mint did not issue coins until 1905. As far as I am aware, all Korean coins continued to circulate with the exception of nickel copper coins which ceased to be legal tender in 1909. Until when - I am not certain. If the coins were deemed to be non legal tender in 1905 as soon as Osaka Mint issued coins, this still possess another issue. Why? The overstruck 10 cash coins were supposedly struck in between 1902 to 1905! For argument sake - let's say the mint records were poorly kept and they may have kept going for the next few years. I think it's more likely that these were likely to be struck later or could have been struck in between such time using older Korean coins struck before 1900s. The next big issue that I have is that this is not just a small tiny operation - these were somewhat common a few years ago - they must have disappeared as soon as I start my interest in them... I honestly struggle to understand how Japanese ronin would be involved in this case. To me, it would have to be the case where the 5 fun coins were devalued or worthless. However this was an era where copper held its value. It would make more sense that most of Korean copper coins were to be melted down and sent to resource poor Japan as copper bullion. To support the argument that this was not likely a Chinese job and more likely a Korean / Japanese counterfeiters, the above error coin is an excellent example. Not only is inscription wrong, the die rotation is coin instead of medal. Now why is this significant? All Chinese coins struck have historically been medal alignment with the exception of error and rare pattern coins. On the other hand, Korean and Japanese coins have historically been coin alignment. Ok - I've done enough talking!
