OK, VAcookey just picked up her chopped trade she had on hold at our LCS. I love trades, and the ones with chop marks are even more cool IMO. And of course, SHE gets one before I do.
Trade dollars were originally created to use in trade in China. It was a good idea, but it wasn't carried out correctly and the individual responsible for the trades continuing to be made was making a lot of money off of them. It is a really interesting story, and one too long and involved to type up here. There is a fair decent write up on Wikipedia. Anyway, the ones that did actually make it to China were chopped to show they were real silver. The Chinese businessman would take a punch unique to him and hammer it into the coin once he was certain the coin was real silver. There are examples out there literally covered in chop marks. The most valuable ones only have one or two marks on them. One of the few times post mint damage actually adds to the value of the coin. but after 3 or so marks, the value then begins to go down.
Nice coins everybody. I was always curious about chopmarked Trade Dollars, and wondered if any of the marks have ever been documented as to who actually stamped them on the coins. Does anyone know? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks. Bruce
I've also wondered about the origin of chopmarks, but I would imagine that tracking down the "choppers" would be difficult at best. If it was common practice it was probably not well-documented. I recently saw a spanish 8 reales piece with chop marks all over it - the story that coin could tell!
To the best of my knowledge the chop marks were unique to the person/ business using it. Something I am very interested in figuring out.
It would be a real challenge to document any of these chopmarks to a particular person or business I'm sure. I collect counterstamped coins and research many of them in an attempt to determine who issued them or for what reason, but chopmarks would be more difficult I'd think. I've always had an interest in them but don't have any in my collection. This thread has renewed my interest though. Bruce
Since most chops are a single Chinese logogram, there are rather like initials. In a given area, each person probably had one unique to him, but there would be hundreds of others using them elsewhere, too.
