A better reference list for Chinese cash coins

On Numista we have this handy reference list:

https://en.numista.com/numisdoc/a-reference-list-of-5000-years-of-chinese-coinage-97.html

This list is very handy for all the mainstream Chinese cash coins... And not much else nor does it seem to have any images, so as a better reference list in an attempt to document ALL Chinese cash coins online I've launched this article today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_cash_coins_by_inscription

In this list Chinese cash coins are organised by dynasty and/or period (and every image on it could be used on Numista or elsewhere in case anyone is interested in expanding the coverage here).

Bookmarked!
Looks really useful!

Quote: "CassTaylor"​Bookmarked!
​Looks really useful!

Thank you very much, ​ although it's still missing a lot of images and many subtle differences in calligraphy and the quality of the coin don't come across as good when it's only in a written form.

Quote: "Trung Quoc Don"​

Quote: "CassTaylor"​Bookmarked!
​​Looks really useful!

​Thank you very much, ​ although it's still missing a lot of images and many subtle differences in calligraphy and the quality of the coin don't come across as good when it's only in a written form.

​It can be really difficult to identify even individual characters, let alone the coin type, especially when the "font" is different; e.g. on coins that use seal script. I have enough trouble with the stroke varieties on Qing dynasty cash coins.

That reminds me, are you going to also do some sort of compilation on Manchu mintmarks on the reverses of Qing cash coins? It's always frustrating when some look very similar except for a stroke or two, and it's just my luck that the relevant stroke happens to be worn away/obscured on my coin.

Already there, please see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_coinage#Mint_marks

I made this list last year, most actually come from Numista here, but I added a lot of Manchu mint marks that the editorial staff of Numista missed from Ulrich Theobald's ChinaKnowledge.de encyclopedia.

By the way if you have any of the mint marks which aren't illustrated you can upload a photograph to Wikimedia Commons and add it to that list, that way other collectors can benefit from it.

Ah, awesome, thank you again!

For you to know, that there is pretty many items on Chinese catalog request queue at the moment. I have added around 50 items, both Northern Song and Southern Song, but I have understood that there will be made some organizations before adding new coins/coin types.

Quote: "Ollisaarinen"​For you to know, that there is pretty many items on Chinese catalog request queue at the moment. I have added around 50 items, both Northern Song and Southern Song, but I have understood that there will be made some organizations before adding new coins/coin types.

Yeah, I wanted to organise Song​ Dynasty cash coins on Wikipedia too, the problem is that inscription alone isn't sufficient because of both the denominations and the "matched cash coins" (對錢) systems. In fact a lot of people can't tell that some extremely different-looking coins they have actually belong to the same series but in a different script, Traditional Chinese looks nothing like Seal script. I would personally suggest adding a whole table of fonts and sizes where the denominations are on the left side and the fonts/scripts are at the top, and this would have to be done per coin.

pejounet seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth... he hasn't posted on either the English or French side for five weeks now.

My oldest pending Chinese requests are from late July.

Quote: "CassTaylor"​pejounet seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth... he hasn't posted on either the English or French side for five weeks now.
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​My oldest pending Chinese requests are from late July.

Is he the only moderator for Chinese coins? Otherwise you could request moderatorship yourself, can't you?​

Quote: "Trung Quoc Don"​

Quote: "CassTaylor"​pejounet seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth... he hasn't posted on either the English or French side for five weeks now.
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​​My oldest pending Chinese requests are from late July.

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​Is he the only moderator for Chinese coins? Otherwise you could request moderatorship yourself, can't you?​

​Officially, yes, but I'm used to long wait times anyway. Once I waited almost a full calendar year for a request to get fully verified.

Otherwise I could probably appeal to a master referee for that, but like others have said previously the China Empire and Republic sections are being "renovated" until who knows when.... so I don't think this is neccesarily applicable, at least not until pejounet comes back.

Quote: "CassTaylor"​

Quote: "Trung Quoc Don"​
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Quote: "CassTaylor"​pejounet seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth... he hasn't posted on either the English or French side for five weeks now.
​​​
​​​My oldest pending Chinese requests are from late July.

​​
​​Is he the only moderator for Chinese coins? Otherwise you could request moderatorship yourself, can't you?​

​​Officially, yes, but I'm used to long wait times anyway. Once I waited almost a full calendar year for a request to get fully verified.
​
​Otherwise I could probably appeal to a master referee for that, but like others have said previously the China Empire and Republic sections are being "renovated" until who knows when.... so I don't think this is neccesarily applicable, at least not until pejounet comes back.

Understandable, there is no need to rush things as Rome wasn't built in one day, and my collection of old Roman coins certainly wasn't collected in one day either. ​

I think that China - Empire should best be divided into its periods as I saw that several dynasties were missing, the Qing Dynasty could best be divided into provinces, I imported a lot of machine-struck coins from the Guangxu era from Scott Semans and they are numerous, just look at these Da Qing Tongbi coins on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dà_Qīng_Tóng_Bì

but now I'm going off topic as these aren't cash coins, I actually like the way Numista organises cash coins, by denomination as the denominations of pre-Ming Dynasty cash coins are often confusing.

One thing I don't really understand, when I was researching my WCC for Imperial China, is the cutoff for China - Empire and China - Ancient. Do Chinese historians use such a cutoff point regularly? Because I haven't seen it in any history sources about the dynasties, Western or Chinese.

The former also begins at the Tang Dynasty, but the latter ends at the Three Kingdoms period; there's a chronological gap of some 350 years between the two. While I'm no expert on cash before the Qing, there must be issues missing from dynasties before the Tang in our catalogue, right?

The thing is, there are 3 periods in Chinese history, Pre)Imperial China (until 220 BC), Imperial China (220 BC-1911 AD), and Post-Imperial China (1912-Present), China wasn't always one country, even during the "Imperial period" and China today is two countries (the People's Republic of China on the Mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan), what many Western writers often do is use European-style dates such as saying "Medieval China", but "the middle ages" in Europe started with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and if use the Hispanic tradition end with the conquest of the Emirate of Granada by Catholic forces, obviously none of these things are relevant to Chinese history so some Eurocentric historians might say that "medieval China" starts with the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty and ends with the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, then the Ming and Qing Dynasties are called "early modern China".

I prefer the Chinese Pre-Imperial, Imperial, and Post-Imperial divide (no matter how flawed it is), people often forget that the Chinese form of government was based on the same fundamental principles (even under foreign domain) throughout the entire Imperial Chinese era, comparatively European states changed their entire political culture during their different epochs, sure most Western European, North- and South-American, and Oceanian governments today can trace their legislative and political origins to the Western Roman Empire, but things like the Germanic invasions, the Catholic schism, the Peace of Westphalia, the French revolution, World War I, Etc. All had major effects, comparatively the Yuan Dynasty which was a part of the Mongol Empire was politically still based on the same Confucian principles employed by the Han Dynasty (despite being ruled by a Buddhist and foreign upper class).

Going even further about my above post, this is also very clearly reflected in the coinage of China, please see this image:



The oldest cash coin here is from circa 300 BC, the fourth (4th) coin was made when Jesus was alive (I'm a staunch Atheist, but let's use him as he's incredibly influential in European, West-Asian, and North-African culture), the fifth cash coin is from over a thousand years ago, the seventh (7th) cash coin was cast under Külüg Khan of the Mongol Empire and the tenth (10th) cash coin is from 1912. To anyone unfamiliar with the list from the first post in this thread all these cash coins could've been made in the same period, to most people cash coins just all look the same, thousands of years could divide them but they appear as if they're all made consistently. That's a part of their beauty to me.

That was very eloquently explained! If this was Reddit (and if I had money), I'd gold you.

I agree with you about the pre, Imperial and post divide; would you say pre-Qin coins should be moved to China - Empire, which could "represent" that middle division? China- Ancient should be for pre-Imperial in my opinion, going by that info.

Quote: "CassTaylor"​That was very eloquently explained! If this was Reddit (and if I had money), I'd gold you.
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​I agree with you about the pre, Imperial and post divide; would you say pre-Qin coins should be moved to China - Empire, which could "represent" that middle division? China- Ancient should be for pre-Imperial in my opinion, going by that info.
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I prefer the term "Ancient China", although that is also a vague term that some people use to mean China up until the Tang, Song, Qing, or even until 1949 depending on the person, I would say "Ancient China" is until 220 BC, so yeah all pre-Qin Dynasty coins, spades, knives, ant-noses, sea shells, and even bridges​ belong there.

19 Apr 18:30 1 Cash - Shaosheng Running script – China - Empire Pending. This is my oldest pending request.

Quote: "Trung Quoc Don"​

Quote: "CassTaylor"​That was very eloquently explained! If this was Reddit (and if I had money), I'd gold you.
​​
​​I agree with you about the pre, Imperial and post divide; would you say pre-Qin coins should be moved to China - Empire, which could "represent" that middle division? China- Ancient should be for pre-Imperial in my opinion, going by that info.
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​​

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​I prefer the term "Ancient China", although that is also a vague term that some people use to mean China up until the Tang, Song, Qing, or even until 1949 depending on the person, I would say "Ancient China" is until 220 BC, so yeah all pre-Qin Dynasty coins, spades, knives, ant-noses, sea shells, and even bridges​ belong there.

I think you should make that into a suggestion on the Numista catalogue forum. ​

Quote: "CassTaylor"​

Quote: "Trung Quoc Don"​
​

Quote: "CassTaylor"​That was very eloquently explained! If this was Reddit (and if I had money), I'd gold you.
​​​
​​​I agree with you about the pre, Imperial and post divide; would you say pre-Qin coins should be moved to China - Empire, which could "represent" that middle division? China- Ancient should be for pre-Imperial in my opinion, going by that info.
​​​
​​​

​​
​​I prefer the term "Ancient China", although that is also a vague term that some people use to mean China up until the Tang, Song, Qing, or even until 1949 depending on the person, I would say "Ancient China" is until 220 BC, so yeah all pre-Qin Dynasty coins, spades, knives, ant-noses, sea shells, and even bridges​ belong there.

​I think you should make that into a suggestion on the Numista catalogue forum. ​

It's best historiographic organisation, not the best numismatic organisation, then I'd rather divide China into 6 (six) periods:

China - Ancient (Pre-Qin)
China - Early Empire (Qin-Sui)
China - Later Empire (Tang-Qing)
China - Republic (1912-1949)
Taiwan (1949-Present)
China - People's Republic (1949-Present)

Simply because if you look at these:



You would notice that all cash coins from the Tang Dynasty onwards look very similar, even the French Indo-Chinese, Japanese, and Korean issues look interchangeable.

Now the reason I like collecting cash coins is because they're basically "the pennies of the Orient", those above cash coins ranging from 300 BC until 1945 all cost less than $ 20,- in fact excluding the Külüg Khan and Republic issues they all cost less than $ 5,- it's unfortunate that many forgers are popping up left and right but if you stay below the $ 50,- range and only buy from trusted sellers you can spend a lifetime without ever getting fakes (I purchased some fakes, but I added "replica" on the coin-holders so others will know in case that after my death that my children will sell them).

Edits: Added the image, re-wrote the last bit to not make it sound as if I'm immortal.
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Completely forgot as to why I would divide "China - Empire", well, that's because of the Wu Zhu cash coins, I don't really actively collect them but I never say "no" to them because they're usually less than $ 2,- and over a thousand years old, while making that list of all Chinese cash coins by inscription I was forced to write this article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zhu

Because this same inscription is repeated a million times and an untrained collector can't tell the difference as "Almost nine hundred different types and over eighteen hundred varieties of Wu Zhu cash coins and Wu Zhu derivatives are known to exist.", so yeah, I had to basically write this monster so the readers wouldn't be confused when going through the Pre-Tang cash coins because they almost all say "Wu Zhu".