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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Loong Siew, post: 3898326, member: 75799&quot;]A most intriguing and interesting coin. Zhao Na Xin Bao 招納信寶。Reverse Shi Shang 使上。Southern Song Dynasty. AD1131. Zeno #40314</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;This extremely rare coin was issued by the General Liu Guangshi of the Southern Song Dynasty when an army under the Jin Dynasty General Wanyan Chang was on an expedition to attack the Southern Song. During the campaign, he devised a clever plot to issue these coins as a secret token to captured Jin as well as Han Chinese soldiers wishing to surrender to the Song within the Jin Dynasty army. Anyone holding these tokens will be granted free passage and welcomed into the Song army. This strategy worked as so many defected to the Song army that the Jin army was forced to retreat. It was recorded that silver and gold variants exists although their locations were lost.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was a period of intense hostility between the Jurchen Jin Dynasty who conquered much of Northern China including the old capital of Kaifeng from the Northern Song. Naturally many conscripted soldiers were of ethnic Han origin and longed to return to the Han Song Dynasty. This clever plot was the only recorded case in history where it was used.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another theory put forth was that these coins were used as identification tokens for spies working for the Song Dynasty under covert espionage within the Jin ranks. However, this theory was unproven and hence the former was the more widely accepted theory as written records were kept of their use.</p><p><br /></p><p>Please kindly share your knowledge and information of such usage of secret and covert use of coins amongst different cultures in history <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie50" alt=":happy:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[ATTACH=full]1027728[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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