I recently purchased this clay mold portion from a dealer (who i get alot of ancients from) who had purchased it from a dealer that lived in China a long time. The coin is a 73B.C. Western Han Dynasty Anonymous WuZhu coin. I actually was very fortunate and had one similar example in my closet downstairs. You can see both together in the last picture. The mold appears to have been fairly large as this a small corner. An expert I know in China stated these would generally have an official code mark put into the mold some place.
Nice find, @Old World Coins . They have been around for a while... MY CHINESE POUR-CAST MOLD: China Wu Zhu coin clay mold unearthed in SanMenXia City in HeNan Province full obverse impression partial second impression probly H-8.6 110-90 BCE Ex: @TypeCoin971793
Very nice! I can't make out the shape of the upper fork on the Zhu on OldWorldCoins' example, but it has a nice very narrow Wu that should assist with identification of the variety. Alegandron, when I look at yours I see a rounded upper fork on the Zhu which would indicate that this is an Eastern Han Wu Zhu and not a Western Han example. Here is my own. It definitely has rounded upper forks on the Zhus and so is Eastern Han. Given its size - the impressions are 26 mm diameter - it is likely from the early Eastern Han era, probably circa later Emperor Guangwu Di or Emperor Ming Di (40-75 AD). I have tentatively attributed it as B4.1 from Gratzer and Fishman's "One Thousand Years of Wu Zhu Coinage, 118 BC - AD 958". SC
I know the dealer who sold that to you! I’ve sold him several mould fragments. Here is my first mould I got: Here is a fragment I used to have along with a sprue that I still have: Here are a few mother moulds I have that were used to make clay moulds: Here is an error mould I have where blobs of metal and a partially-formed coin are adhered to it. I have several others, but I currently don’t have pictures of them. This is a lot I was bidding on, but I did not win. I would have bid double what it went for, but my funds were wiped out. The lot went very cheaply (like $500)
Nice stuff. The patina of the first one looks just like mine. Mine came from a dealer in Zhejiang. SC
