 Rare Chinese Coins
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Xia-Shang-Zhou夏商周 | Jin晉
| Qin秦 | Wei魏 | Chu楚
| Zhao趙 | Yan燕 | Qi齊
Categories
There
are about 30,000 different Chinese coins including calligraphy and mint
variations, spanning over a period of 3,000 years. They have many shapes
and sizes. Since Han Dynasty, the coins are standardized into bronze items with
round shape with a square hole in the center, and a rim at the edge. It is quite
impossible to present such a vast amount of information in a web site, so we
choose to present several hundred of the rarest types.
Ratings
Chinese
coin collectors have evolved a rating scale of ten. Those that are found in ten
of thousand has a rating of ten, while in the other extreme, those that have
known records for not more then five in the world received a rating of one.
Those that exist with less than fifty are give a rating of two. Those
extremely rare ones are not listed in these references or only show up in one or
two. So, being listed or not is also an indicator of rarity. Most of
these are donated to the museums and hard to come by in the open coin market.
Most Chinese coin publications do include such rating, so such rating is a
consensus of many collectors over a very long period. These ratings do vary with
time and authors, but seldom exceed one order of magnitude. According to my
impression the scale of ten system is really in exponential scale.
About
this collection
Hong
Kong, being the gateway of Chinese antiques to the outside world, is a
great resource of Chinese coins. Prof. Kai Keung Mark has been collecting
Chinese coins for twenty years and would like to share with you some of his
rarest collections with ratings of one or two. All rare coins are subject to
forgery, and there is no official scientific method for authentication yet.
So authentication of coins is only through experience judgment. As a scientist,
Prof. Mark approaches this issue on the conservative side using certain
criteria: style of calligraphy, patina, weight, metallurgy, and reliability of
the source. Therefore this display can serve as reference material, point of
discussion, place to meet friends with common interest.
He considers Chinese coins a good
reflection of Chinese history in the areas of economic development, Chinese
language and calligraphy, metallurgy technology, and social styles. Therefore,
Chinese coins can serve many different interest groups. He strongly recommends
overseas Chinese to use them to teach Chinese culture to their next generation
which he himself have done the same. These days, the skill to fake coins have
significantly improved. The rarer the coin, the higher the chance for forgery. From his 20 years of experience, Professor Mark can
differentiate the authentic coins from the forgeries in most cases. He is
developing a scientific authentication method using non-invasive surface
science and advance instruments like XRF
and PIXI.
References
-
Ting Fu-Pao 丁福保 , Illustrated catalog
of ancient Chinese coins 歷代古錢圖說.
Shanghai. 1940.
-
Suen et al.
孫仲浥，施新彪，周祥，胡薇，黃錫明.
Concise Chinese coin dictionary.
上海古籍出版社.1991.
-
Ma Fei Hai, Chief editor,
馬飛海主編 Chinese historical coin and money
monograph. 中國歷代貨幣大系
Vol. 1-11. 古籍出版社.1991. (good for detail
story, but not price or rating)
-
Hwah Kwang Pu , 華光普Chinese ancient coin
catalogue. 四川大學出版社.1992
-
Hwah Kwang Pu. 華光普 Catalogue of Chinese
ancient coins.中國古錢目錄.
湖南出版社.
上中下三卷 1993.
-
Chow Chjang 周祥 Rare coins of China
中國珍稀錢幣.
上中下三冊.
學林出版社. 1996. (three thick volumes)
-
Yu Wei Chow 俞偉超. The complete
collection of Chinese ancient coins.
中國古錢大系.
西南財經大學出版社.
1997.
Coin collections
Xia-Shang-Zhou夏商周 | Jin晉
| Qin秦 | Wei魏 | Chu楚
| Zhao趙 | Yan燕 | Qi齊
|
Chinese
Antiques
