ASIAN CASH COINS

Recent changes and additions

2015

24 April : added 88 Korean coins
11 April : Added Japanese banknotes ( -> Japanese banknotes)

Introduction

This coin collection, the banknotes and the booklet come from my great-uncle Lazare Montagu (1875 - 1959). He was a catholic missionary in Japan between 1902 and 1927, in Hakodate (1902-1905), Hirosaki (1905-1911) and Sendai (1911-1927). The coins were on a string, which looped around groups of them sorted by kind. They were left untouched on their string for many decades, until I finally undid them all from the string and sorted them in February 2003. I used the collector's guide (see below) to order them. The website www.sportstune.com/chinese was very helpful to date them and to understand the guide (I don't know Japanese or Chinese). It became immediately obvious that the coins in the guide were arranged in chronological order. But it took me a while to understand that some coins were from the same date, and differed only by the script (seal script, grass script, etc.). I found a description of the different possible scripts on the net. The identification of difficult cases and corrections were kindly provided by Luke Roberts and his Japanese friends. The Korean coins are not from my great-uncle. For these coins the website of primaltrek.com was most helpful.

The next step was to post my collection and guide on the net, to share them and, hopefully, to get some feedback. Jacques Cadaugade kindly took pictures of all the coins with a Nikon digital camera. After several tries, he used two halogen lights to light up the coins from the side and a filter to make up for the color temperature differences between the light and the coins. The result is good for most Chinese coins, but their color is still a bit too red. Most Japanese coins turned out to be too dark, and I redid the latter with a scanner. This site will evolve as I find out more about these coins.

A collector's guide

Outer Cover title: Kosen kakaku cho (A Register of Prices of Old Coins)

Title: Kosen nedantsuki (A Price List of Old Coins)

Author: Sano Eizan (family name first and personal name second)

Publisher: Miyazaka Kosaburo, and printed at the Osaka mint

Date: 3rd printing, 4th year of Taisho era (1915), March 15 (it also notes that the first printing was in 1914 - This must have been a popular book).

Cover

large coins

large coins

Japan Korea

Japan Korea

China
550 - 918

China
918 - 1007

China
1007 - 1077

China
1077 - 1117

China
1117 - 1204

China
1204 -

China
- 1644

China
1644 - 1722

China
1661 - 1875
/Annam

Annam

Annam/Charms

Charms

Colophon