I've had this 5 cent Szechuan horse gaming token (X# M1117) for some time, but never noticed until today that it appears to be struck on a planchet cut from something else. If you look to the left of the top flower on the reverse, there appears to be two O's, following it back it looks like an R and a C maybe? The obverse has something going on near the leg of the horse. Any ideas?

Nice token.

Very interesting Blackhawk - it seems that it was overstruck on Szechuan coinages of this type:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=270230215240

Do let me know if you are willing to let it go anytime Blackhawk. Chinese overstruck coins seems to be not well studied and I am looking at it when I get the opportunities to.

The sizes would be very different, so the original coin would have been cut down?

Yes, I don't see why it's not possible or not doable Bill. This is one of the overstruck Chinese coins that I have:



This is what the original is supposed to be:



The other Chinese overstruck coin is the Uighurstan coinage which is quite difficult to find.

Ater taking a look in the Krause, it appears that there were different sized brass coins with the ring design from Szechuan in 1912. It makes one wonder though...Is the value of the token greater than the coin that it was minted from? If not, who had the money at that time in China to use the coin to make such a token?

I'm pretty sure it was struck in the early years the Republic of China was formed and the old coinages were later demoneitized. The same theory occurred to the Korean 5 fun coins as these were imported to China, most likely sold as scrap.

I'm just reacting to the location and positioning of the underlying ring design. I realize the underlying coin will be distorted by the over strike, it just doesn't seem to align right in my mind if the planchets are the same size. It appears to me that it is the ring design you identify, but the distortion effect seems way off center unless a planchet was cut down from the original coin.

I think I misread your response at first and we are saying the same thing. I'm slow sometimes.