Need some help here!!!

Tom Sawyer

Jr. Member
Feb 23, 2014
46
26
Binghamton ny
Detector(s) used
AT PRO
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting

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Tom_in_CA

Gold Member
Mar 23, 2007
13,837
10,360
Salinas, CA
🥇 Banner finds
2
Detector(s) used
Explorer II, Compass 77b, Tesoro shadow X2
Those are Chinese Cash coins. The last of them were minted around 1910-ish.

Cash (Chinese coin) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's hard to tell from your grainy picture, but it looks like the 2nd side has only 2 characters, right? (as opposed to the first side, which as 4 characters). If so, the 2-character sided coins are the much older ones. Dating to earlier 1800s or 1700's or something. You can look at up easily, to see when they went to 4-character-on-each-side.

And the dates are not honed down to a single year. Because they went in "dynsasties" (or something like that), that can be for 50 or 70 years or whatever. And even once you hone down the identity of just your type, let me save you some time: A) none of them have any value, and B) the date ("dynasty") you pin yours down to, will have utterly no bearing on when it was lost, when it was circulated, etc...

They turn up all over the west coast, wherever the Chinese RR workers, mine-workers, immigrants, etc... Came in. Evidentally those immigrants must've brought them over by the BOX load, because they're all over the place. I've found hundreds. Especially during old china-town district demolition sites. And they turn up all over the gold-rush country (where chinese miners were). And the dates can go back even to the 1500 and 1600s. But that doesn't mean anything. They must've been stored in barrels, and brought over with no bearing on their mint dates.
 

scotty544

Hero Member
Mar 11, 2013
622
203
Arkansas
Detector(s) used
Minelab CTX 3030 XP Deus Whites V3i
Tesoro Silver Saber
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
I found two in a yard about a month ago, they are Chinese. Value? I have no idea.
 

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