One huge Chinese silver coin

[gxseries]

Yes I know buying Chinese coins are like picking coins from a minefield but I've decided to give it a shot:

 

 

Weighs 26.4 grams. Appearently the technical weight is supposed to be 27.4grams or so? It's not struck in cheap iron and rings like silver but that doesn't really mean much.

[satootoko]

Weighs 26.4 grams. Appearently the technical weight is supposed to be 27.4grams or so? It's not struck in cheap iron and rings like silver but that doesn't really mean much.

Well, the chopmark looks right, and as you know, very few counterfeits are chopped.l Even so, a full gram short is pretty suspicious.

[ccg]

From a chart (p.318) showing some weighed and assayed dragon dollars in Kann's Currencies of China, a Peh Yang (Pei Yang / Beiyang) dollar should be expected to be more uniform in weight.

 

The sample Pei Yang dollar weighed .7396 k'uping taels vs standard weight of .7245 kuping taels.

[gxseries]

I'm pretty confused - I've been researching some examples of genuine coins and they vary from 26.4-26.9g. But I thought since precious metals are involved, the Chinese would be a bit more careful?

[ccg]

Keep in mind that there weren't really any true uniform standards - each province issued its own coins independently, and some mints weren't even gov't run.

 

As such, there was a general mistrust of currency from other provinces - a Kwangtung $1 would only be taken at discount in Peking just as a Peiyang $1 would only be taken as a discount in Canton.