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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;hontonai, post: 1363230, member: 4703&quot;]Cho-gin are pieces of silver produced during the Tokugawa Shogunate from approximately 1600-1865.&nbsp; There are many pictured in the Japanese Numismatic Dealers Assn. catalog with round stampings, but none exactly matching yours, which doesn&#039;t really mean much regarding genuineness.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Munro in <i>Coins of Japan</i>, the 1904 work on Japanese coinage and its history which is the earliest comprehensive treatise on the subject published in English, describes them as &quot;long slabs&quot; of silver, which were customarily wrapped with mame-gin, the so-called silver &quot;bean money&quot; to equalize the silver weight.&nbsp; Neither Munro nor any subsequent English language author I am aware of, directly explains the stampings, but considering the source of the pieces (which were technically not &quot;money&quot; issued for circulation) they are probably similar in purpose to the chopmarks found on western silver which circulated in Asia - certification of weight.&nbsp; However, the stampings were probably done by the issuer, not one or more merchants through whose hands it passed.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are differences between the&nbsp; photos in the JNDA catalog and the plates in <i>Coins of Japan</i>, demonstrating that neither has a complete depiction of such pieces.</p><p><br /></p><p>The size of your piece is at the low end of the range of genuine cho-gin.&nbsp; The most similar one pictured by the JNDA is a Hoei Mitsu-ho&nbsp; piece from 1710-11, which is significantly longer.</p><p><br /></p><p>If your piece is genuine, I would conservatively value it at $2,500 in the condition pictured.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wouldn&#039;t trust any US slabber&#039;s opinion on genuineness, and I don&#039;t know of anyone outside of Japan capable of validating it.</p><p><br /></p><p>If it were mine, I would definitely take it with me on my next trip to Japan, and have it looked at by two or three specific dealers in Tokyo and Osaka.</p><p><br /></p><p>Do you know anything more about its origin than you posted?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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