Hi Can anyone lead me in the right direction on this piece? Not even sure if it is a coin or some sort of amulet or..? I emailed photos of it to the creator of the Primaltrek.com / Ancient Chinese Charms & Coins and he replied that he hadn't seen one like it before and he didn't think it is Chinese. About 48mm & 23.0g. Thank you!
Lion, stork, human(?) and tree(?) symbols don't seem to tie in with any religion I'm familiar with, and a Google search on those keywords in combination only come up with some references to Aesop's Fables. There are no lions in Japan, Korea, or Southeast Asia generally, so its inclusion pretty much rules out those areas as the source. Perhaps North African?
I have nothing firm, but the overall shape and positioning of the characters is vaguely Chinese. Its not a Chinese piece, but I am wondering if its from somewhat near china so they would have had seen Chinese pieces. So, as a completely baseless guess, I am wondering 18-19th century central asia or India. Btw, moneyer is right, definitely not a coin but a charm.
Thanks all Some ideas for me and I will keep up the search. I think it could be quite old. - at least from a western perspective.
Since none of you have mentioned them, I'll risk commenting on two interesting features: 1) The appearance of the reverse strongly suggests (to me, anyway) an unusual method of 'striking' the piece; it looks like the 'planchet' was in a semi-plastic state, neither molten nor solid, when the pressure was applied by the dies. The granular condition of only ONE side seems more than casually odd...it's reminiscent of sintered material, and if it's an old piece that would have been a coincidental rather than desired outcome, IMO. 2) The rope-molded rim and hole-borders are probably congruent, as there are the same number of coils on each side (27 outer, 8 inner). I look for, and often find, odd numbers of circumferential divisions...the fact that there are odd and even in this example leads me to believe the counts were incidental, not purposeful. A pic of the outer rim would be nice, but I'm happy with what I see. A very nice piece, and thanks for showing!
I assumed it was not struck at all, but rather cast like all such items are in the far east. While the reverse is a little unusual, its not unseen in a crude casting operation. If cast, the edge design is easily incorporated into the casting as well. I would wager close pics of th eedge will show where the sprue was.
No question about it, this piece is cast. Enlarge the obverse picture and the typical grainy surface shows quite easily. That said, not all[ east Asian tokens, charms, coins, or medals are cast. Coining presses were introduced in Hong Kong several years before they spread to Japan in 1870, and they spread fairly rapidly after 1880. I wouldn't take that bet without some verrrrrrrry high odds!
Thanks for these interesting comments Here are a few photos of the edge. The edge is mostly uniform and smooth except one spot - might this be the sprue location? (that is the casting port?). Or perhaps just old damage...
Of course you are right hontanai, there has been struck cash and charms. I should have said most. LOC it looks like that could be it. Sometimes extra metal sticks to the coin and has to be filed off, other times the coin loses a little metal when broken off the tree like your coin appears to be. Sprues are not just found on asian coins. Many ancient cultures cast the flans and the coins still have casting sprues, ancient jewish coins coming especially to mind.
