This was an interesting lot that appeared out of nowhere. The seller must had very similar taste as mine. Some are simply rare - maybe I have seen them appear just once every few years. From what I gather, they have been sitting in his collection since 1970s (!). It's one of those hoards where you can't win them all. I did end up with a key date that I have been looking for the past decade. First up is 1894 5 fun coin. This is somewhat a 'weak' rotation error coin - not very common but can happen. Quality control was quite poor back then. The usual alignment is meant to be the dragons facing in a vertical line. In this case it looks like it's rotated around 20 degrees. You will see an example in the next photo Next up is an unusual off center coin, 1895 1 fun, 2 characters. If you collect Korean coins from this era, error coins like this is very uncommon, if not scarce! Last coin is one that I have been hunting for a good decade. I believe I have only seen just 5 examples for offer - 3 in damaged condition, one was one of my hands and this is one that I finally obtained. 1895 1/4 yang, 2 characters. This is not to be confused with the 1895 3 characters version As of why this version is significantly rarer than the other, I cannot explain why. An interesting aspect of early Korean coinage is that while the coins were first struck in Dec 1892, coins were not released to the public until Aug 1894 !!! There are reports that the mint in Incheon struggled to strike sufficient quantity but there is also a very huge political aspect behind the scene. Welcome the Fat Man - Yuan Shi Kai The situation gets very messy - while the Korean mint was relatively new (with German technology), the mint employees were from Japan. And why would China be involved? Korea at this time was a Chinese protectorate. and of course was not keen on having the Japanese being too involved. Ultimately the root cause of the first Sino - Japanese war in Jul 1894 was over Korea. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War So how does the 'Fat Man' get involved in this discussion? Yuan Shi Kai being a faithful advisor to Korea strongly objected to the Japanese striking coins with the wording "Great Chosen". This is simply a bit too close to the "Great Nippon". It seems that he had a valid concern - Japan did invade China after all A Japanese yen coin struck around this era - 1894 1 yen. Notice how similar the design is as well as the wording "Great Nippon" Did his opinion mattered? It seems like it did - at least for one year. In 1892, all coins were struck with the wording "Great Chosen" and in 1893, "Chosen". 1894 seems like is a mixed bag - perhaps both types were struck, one before and after the Japanese invaded China. The mint employees probably didn't care in 1895 and 1896 as both types were used - this is an interesting puzzle that I never looked at closely. I'll present more when I get around to it - the history of early Korean machine struck coinage presents a lot of challenges as well as plenty of troubled times ahead. Feel free to share your early Korea coinage, it will be 'fun' !
The Japanese dragon appears more ferocious than the Korean one, but any of them would be frightening to encounter!
Yeah, but not really these older coins. Not yet. I don't trust my own ability to detect counterfeits with these coins. That's why I don't really want to get into them. The incentive to counterfeit them is very high considering the reward for getting away with it, which is $$.
I can agree that the counterfeiters are getting their hands into everything. I was stung a while back - I manage to spot it due to the duplicate library that I can refer to. I guess I was lucky that I had a head start more than a decade ago. Back then Korean coinage was not this popular and of course didn't cost this much. Counterfeits started to appear in the early 2010s. Some of the Korean coins that I own have not appeared in the market for the last 5+ years. Even the 1892 5 yang which is at a low mintage of 19,923 is much easier to find (just expensive) compared to others. That said, a type set is very achievable - just not a complete year set...
NOT A COIN PERSON....at all. Can someone here suggest how I would go about getting a 5 yang and a J (or could be I)WHAN(?) valued or checked? They were my Moms (she's been gone 20 years) and I was going to make jewelry out of them but I googled them and they seem to be worth something as a collector item in set of jewelry. Im in Southern California area...Just look for a coin shop??
Take a photo of them. Get your camera as close to the coin as possible. Please take photos of both sides. Upload images to a posting here. Two or three of our Koreaphile members here should be able to tell you what you have and of the value.
Just wanted to pop in to say, it's pretty neat that these coins use both Hanja and Hangeul, and Latin characters! I'm surprised there are so many Hanja characters though. I always figured that Hangeul was the go-to after the 19th century
Linda, unfortunately both of the crown size coins are not genuine. I don't recommend them to be used as jewellery as the alloy may have traces of lead / arsenic. Hotwheelsearl: I believe Korea actively used hanja up to late 1950s. Korea being a Japanese colony up to end of WW II would have forced the public to learn Japanese which would have plenty of kanji / hanja. It would only be the children and grandchildren born after the war where the use of hanja drop. Today most Koreans would recognize the basics but not too much - there is just no real need for it other than reading old texts.
Well that's sad, from rags to riches and back to rags in a day. LOL! Wonder how my mom got them. Were a lot of these fakes something being passed around before 1980? Her having never been in Korea or anywhere near it.
The 5 yang and 1 whan have always been expensive because of the low mintage and survival rate. 1 whan survival number is supposedly at mere 77! These are easily 4+ figure coins in any condition, 1 whan perhaps towards 5 figure mark. These unsurprisingly are heavily counterfeiters because it's one of those impossible coins for a normal collector to obtain an example. That said, I was in the middle of updating my digital album. I'll try to get it sorted next week...
Yes, Linda, I can easily see that these Yang and Hwan coins have the hallmarks of counterfeits from the lettering and designs. These were heavily counterfeited. Not sure when or where these were made. Your mother might have been ripped off by someone at a flea market, when she was on vacation in another state/country or something like that. I hope she didn't pay too much for them.
I got around to free up a bit of time and decided to work on the early Korean machine coinage. Had to rephotograph everything as I used different cameras along the way and the photos look terrible. I'm still improving on my photography skills (and website skills at the same time...) Some day I would like to redesign the digital album as I designed it back a decade ago. This was designed in A4 size instead of the slightly smaller B5 size that Dansco and other manufacturers use. Some minor things that I discovered while I was photographing these coins are that the alignments are just all over the place! One cannot use the 'dots' for alignment. It is known that the early Gwangmu coins are meant to be aligned where the dragons' head are in a vertical line. Unlike the Japanese coins, they are often aligned with dots around the character 'x sen' or to the Meiji character. The same also happens with the dragon coinage. The biggest offender that I noticed is with the phoenix alignment for coins struck 1905 - 1910. Even with major TPGs - most catalog and slabs that I have seen are aligned to the bottom dots "x chon". Instead I strongly believe that the alignment is meant to be where the phoenix's head is held high at 12 o'clock instead of the rooster like alignment at 10 o'clock. I think I can close the book on this collection - I have done the best for the past decade and that will be it for me (for now). All other coins are too rich for my blood. I personally like how they look like for size comparison Added some reading material if you are into this particular coinage. The digital album is also quite neat - those holes shall be left as it is! http://gxseries.com/numis/koreatype/koreatype_early_all.htm
