Chinese Coins

Large numbers of countries first took on the regular use of coins from foreign countries long before they created their own. It was easier than creating the infrastructure, laws and governing bodies to oversee the creation of their own currency and inevitably worked out cheaper in the long run. However, as some economies grew and others shrunk these countries found it much more appealing to create their own coins. The Chinese did things a little different to most countries in this respect though. They did use coins from other countries but instead of simply taking those coins at face value they would weigh the coin and use their experience to judge the purity of the metal and then attribute their own value to the coins. This meant the value of the coins was affected much less by changing economies although it did obviously make a difference to some extent.

Chopped Chinese coins

When people brought foreign coins into China, they were looked on more as being ingots than coins. Chinese experts then took these coins and meticulously weighed them and judged the overall value of the metal using their eyesight and experience. Once they had judged a value for the coin they would place a chop mark on them. This was done by the traders themselves, and chopping soon became a daily part of trading and currency life. Coins were chopped for several reasons.

Each trader had his own chop mark meaning that they could offer a certain guarantee to their customers of the value of the coins. The more trusted a trader or local bank was the more acceptable their chop mark became. The most skilled of assayers would be able to indicate to their customers that they had evaluated the coins, or sycees, that they were handing over and had identified them to be of very high quality. While most chopping was harmless to the coin and, therefore, the silver content it was often necessary for a trader to drill into the coin to be completely sure of it's credence.

Forged Chinese coins

Counterfeiting silver coins became a popular act as new milled silver coins were introduced to China. The traders had not seen coins like these before and so they sometimes found it difficult to truly assay their quality. However, traders learnt fast and they knew that even coins that were already chopped could in fact be fake. For this reason many traders insisted on placing their own chop mark over the top of one that already existed. Many Chinese coins became very heavily chopped and almost unidentifiable as the original coin. Similarly, it became difficult to recognize now intricate chop marks that were appearing on coins.

Typical Chinese coins with chop marks

Chinese traders were a very astute bunch and there were essentially three coins they regularly accepted and chopped. These were the Spanish silver cob, the Pillar dollar and the Dutch Drucaton. These coins used very high-grade silver and so initially there were few problems with the action of trading and subsequently chopping coins. The introduction of new milled coins was where problems arose and the traders found it increasingly difficult to authenticate these coins. Some chopped coins are quite valuable, depending on the trader and the usual aspects of coin valuation including rarity and condition. Because coins were drilled and chiseled to check for the purity of the silver and to ensure that coins weren't simply silver coated it can be difficult to find coins of some era that are in good condition.