REFERENCE GUIDE

I offer this reference guide to Chinese coins with the hope of promoting greater understanding and appreciation these coins but please note THIS IS NOT A LIST OF COINS OFFERED FOR SALE.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO NOTE

Major references used : S - Schjoth (Chinese Currency), FD - Fisher's Ding, COOLE - (assorted volumes), SE - Shanghai Encyclopedia (assorted volumes), Robert Tye - Wang Mang, Mitchiner - Oriental Coins and Their Values (volumes 1 to 3), H - Hartill Chinese Cast Currency.
"Bronze" is used to refer to all copper-alloy's. Coins cast of other metals will be noted.
In most cases, old style translations are used on this site. The new style is better, but few English-language references use it and cross referencing would be confusing. At some time I hope to modify this site to adopt the new style, but this is probably several years away.
Images are chosen to represent only types and can be larger or smaller than the actual coins, with actual sizes included in most descriptions soon. I built much of this site when people only had dial-up modems and large images took far to long to load. I will provided large images as they become available and time permits.
Valuations are in Canadian dollars and in most cases reflect the market as of AD 2002 when most of this site was last worked. We are slowly upgrading this information as it becomes available, but that is a very slow process.
The majority of unknown coins people research on this site turn out to be Ching Dynasty coins. If you have no idea what your coin is I suggest starting with the Ching Dynasty page.